


In Winter Come the Storms

by AfricanDaisy



Series: The Iathrim Chronicles [9]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Adopted Children, Corporal Punishment, Discipline, Father-Son Relationship, Greenwood, Hurt/Comfort, Original Character(s), Second Age, Spanking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:22:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 45,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28088454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AfricanDaisy/pseuds/AfricanDaisy
Summary: Finally happy and loved after a lifetime spent thieving and selling himself to survive, Luthavar Faelindion doesn't expect anything to disturb the peaceful life that he has found in Greenwood. But fate has a way of catching up with us. And in winter, the storms come.
Series: The Iathrim Chronicles [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/25743
Comments: 68
Kudos: 47





	1. Distractions

**Author's Note:**

> This is the third and final installment in what I informally refer to as the Lutha Trilogy. The first part can be found here https://archiveofourown.org/works/19484938/chapters/46382407 and the second part here https://archiveofourown.org/works/24497308/chapters/59133112. You probably don't HAVE to read both those parts but I would recommend it.
> 
> Please note: as per the tags and as in previous stories, this story does include spanking as a form of discipline.

It was a pointer smacking down on the desk that made Luthavar Faelindion jump.

Lutha was startled, but no more than that, for the person wielding the pointer was Elder Thureneth. His adoptive grandmother liked using the pointer to get his attention, and it made her laugh when he jumped. That she did not use it for any other purposes had been a nice surprise to Lutha after studying with Elder Angoliel and becoming all too familiar with her rather more unpleasant usage of the pointer. But that had been a few years ago when Lutha had first started his apprenticeship with Thureneth. He had since finished his formal education with Angoliel, and he was pleased to be a full-time apprentice learning the ins and outs of the tricky profession of trade and commerce.

“You are entirely distracted today, Lutha,” Thureneth observed. “I can’t imagine why you are not enthralled by the study of Dwarven greetings and customs.”

“Sorry,” Lutha replied. “I’m distracted today.”

“There seems to be an echo in here,” Thureneth said with a roll of her eyes. “Now, you might find this lesson dull, but it is also important and I _will_ be testing you on it before we break for the winter festival. More importantly than that, you need to have learned these things by the time I travel to Erebor in the spring to renew our trade with the Dwarves there or else you’ll have to stay behind. Still, I suppose we can stop for today.”

“Oh, could we? Thank you,” Lutha said, sighing in relief.

“I’m only partly doing it for you, elfling. It’s no fun for me to talk to what might as well be an empty room.” Thureneth put the pointer down and leaned back against her desk, resting her hands on the edge as she regarded her grandson thoughtfully. “Do you want to talk about whatever is occupying your mind?”

“It’s just…this thing with Galad.”

Thureneth took a breath and nodded slowly. “Ah. Yes. Faelind has told me.”

“It makes me so angry!” Lutha snapped suddenly with a flash of grey eyes. “Why can’t they leave him alone?”

_They_ were the father and eldest brothers of Lutha’s best friend Galadaelin Thranorion – Galad, as most everyone called him. When Lutha had first met Galad a little under forty years ago, Galad had been staying with Elder Nithaniel while he waited hopefully to be taken on as a healing apprentice by Elder Nestaeth. That had followed a long battle with his domineering father, who had forbidden him from journeying south in the first place, and had only finally agreed _if_ Galad studied at the Temple of Greenwood and nowhere else. Though the apprenticeship with Elder Nestaeth had not come to fruition, Galad had been offered a place with her son, Master Healer Nestorion.

Galad had settled in well with Nestorion. He had become close not only to Lutha but with the other member of their small friendship group, Alphros, who had apprenticed to Elder Feredir. Family ties had been strengthened too, for Galad had been given the opportunity to form closer bonds with his third brother Noendir, his aunt Parveth, and his grandfather Bregolas, all of whom served the Temple of Greenwood in one way or another; Parveth as the Mistress of Novices, and the two ellyn as warriors. As for Thranor and his eldest sons, they had left Galad alone. They had not _quite_ disowned him, but so disgusted had they been with his disobedience that months of no contact from them had turned into years. Galad’s feelings had been hurt. At least for a time. Once he had understood that his life had become his own, he had stopped minding quite so much. Life had been good.

But then out of the blue, letters had begun arriving; letters from Thranor ordering his youngest son home to answer for his wilfulness, letters from Celegnir telling Galad that enough was enough, letters from Breigon threatening to come down there and drag Galad back to their northern home. For a while it had been easy enough to ignore the letters, but in time, Nestorion had sought advice from Faelind regarding the rights of a master versus the rights of a father. Faelind had readily advised that while in some ways Master Thranor had the greater rights as Galad’s father, Nestorion also had rights given that an apprenticeship contract existed between himself and Galad; and, as there were concerns that Galad might be kept from returning should he venture into the far northern lands where his family lived, that would be a breach of contract, and so Nestorion was well within his rights _not_ to allow Galad to leave. That had suited Galad perfectly.

Thranor and his eldest sons had gone quiet for a few years until the letters had started again, this time seemingly expressing an interest in what Galad was doing and inviting him to spend Yule at home. Whether they had been genuine or not, Galad had ignored them. Now, some months later, there had been no more letters, but Celegnir and Breigon had come to the south and they had rooms at one of the inns in town. Galad had been quiet and resigned when he had heard that, Nestorion furious and Lutha seething with rage, for even if the ellyn had made no move to approach Galad, their presence close by had to be a veiled threat. Faelind had agreed with that, but he had pointed out that having other family members in the immediate area meant that Galad’s bothers did have legitimate reasons to be there. Without any evidence of nefarious intentions, it was not a simple matter of just ordering them to leave.

“I expect they feel that they and their father are owed something by Galad,” Thureneth was saying. “Some people feel such entitlement, I suppose, when it comes to their family or their friends. Entitlement to obedience, loyalty, dedication. They likely feel that Galad has neglected his duties as a son and a brother.”

“They haven’t done anything to earn any of those things.” Lutha rested his chin in his hands and blew out a frustrated huff. “Galad wants to go into town, you know. He said that he won’t go looking for his brothers but that if he does see them he wants them to know that he’s not scared. I understand that, I think, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. What if they take him?”

“Presumably he wouldn’t go alone,” Thureneth said mildly.

“No. Alphros and I agreed to go with him tomorrow,” Lutha replied. “I suppose I could just bite his brothers if we see them.”

“Luthavar,” Thureneth reproved him.

“Joke,” he said under his breath.

Well, half a joke, anyway.

When Lutha returned home that afternoon, the grooms were busy in the stables but the house was empty. Faelind was in his office at the not-palace on the hill, and the housekeeper and the cook had already left for the day. It was an exceptionally large house for just two people, and it was _especially_ exceptionally large when just one of those people were in it. Sometimes when Lutha was by himself, he wondered how his father had endured so many years alone when the great emptiness of the house must surely have exacerbated his solitude. But for all that, it was not a cold house. It had never been a cold house, not even when Lutha had first arrived there and had thought Faelind cold. In some ways it had been a sad house, a monument to the hopes and dreams that Faelind had once had of many children for himself and his lost wife Midhaearien, maybe even grandchildren one day. That was a life now long lost to Faelind, but he said that Lutha brought joy into the house. Lutha always liked that.

A thorough investigation of the kitchen revealed a large pot of soup simmering and a roast duck keeping warm in the oven with crispy roast potatoes and a selection of winter vegetables. The cook had also made a fruit pie with the last of the autumn berries, which was sitting in the cold cupboard opposite the milk and cheeses that had been delivered that morning. Lutha considered helping himself to a slice, but in the end he decided that biscuits would be a less obvious disappearance. He took a handful of them and wandered off to study the materials that Thureneth had given him. He felt a little bad about having been so distracted, and he certainly didn’t want to waste her time, so he thought that he ought to try and make amends.

The solar where Lutha chose to study was cool, but there was early winter sunlight streaming through the glass roof and the floor to ceiling windows, and a warm blanket draped over the back of his favourite chair. He wrapped that around his shoulders, breathing in the fresh greenness of the plants that surrounded him. That was how he could be found a little while later when Faelind returned.

“There you are.”

“Here I am.” Lutha put his book aside and smiled as his father came to give him a kiss on the brow. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“I am glad to be home.” Faelind glanced around the solar with its water feature built into the floor and the array of plants, flowers, and potted trees that gave it a soothing scent of herbs and citrus blended together. “Now that the weather is turning colder you really ought to light the heat lamps, Luthavar. I would prefer that you not catch a chill – and only partly for your sake.”

Lutha laughed ruefully. He was not the best patient in the world. “Maybe you ought to make me some cocoa just to ward off any potential chill that I may have caught. And perhaps if we look, we’ll find pie or something to have with our cocoa.”

“Might I take that to mean that you have already conducted an investigation of the kitchen and found that there is indeed pie?” Faelind asked dryly.

The difference in temperature between the solar and the main house when Faelind guided Lutha back inside was startling, and Lutha supposed that he ought to have lit the heat lamps. He sat at the table in the pleasant warmth of the kitchen while Faelind took out the pie. That pleased him. His father was strict but generally not unreasonable, and a little matter like breaking into a pie shortly before dinner was not a battle that Faelind was likely to choose.

“Next week I must leave for a few days to visit Judge Baleth further north,” Faelind remarked, as he cut two slices of pie. “I shall not be away long but I would be pleased of your company if you would like to come with me, Luthavar.”

“I’d like that,” Lutha said readily. “What’s the reason for the trip?”

Faelind let out a sharp sigh and shook his head. “The recipient of an unfavourable outcome in a trial presided over by Baleth has appealed her ruling. It is arrant nonsense, and what this individual will do when I rule in favour of the original sentence, I have no idea. Take the matter to Elder Rethedir, I expect, though he too will see the matter for the complete debacle that it is. Still, I am dutybound to investigate and so I shall.”

“I’m sorry, Ada. That sounds unpleasant.” A thought occurred to Lutha then, and he asked curiously, “Can you be impartial if you’ve already made up your mind about the whole thing?”

“That is a good question, my little boy, and I am glad that you asked it,” Faelind said proudly, as he put the pie on the table and began making cocoa for both of them. “The person who made this appeal has a relatively long history of attempting to steal horses and other livestock to sell them onwards for his own gain. On this occasion, as indeed on many occasions before, he was caught in the act. Only this time he was sat astride the horse owner’s prize stallion with a line of mares following him out of the stables. His thievery is not in question.”

“Maybe you should make a law that says people aren’t allowed to argue their convictions,” Lutha suggested.

Faelind raised an eyebrow at that. “It surprises me that you would take such a stance.”

“I’m surprised too,” Lutha admitted, shifting uncomfortably. “I just said that without thinking about it. But you’re right, it wouldn’t be fair.”

“It was the way of things many years ago when my father was Elder of Law and Justice. In fact…” Faelind smiled slightly, but it was a cool smile that didn’t touch his eyes; it was the smile he always wore when he spoke of his father, and the way he had smiled forty years ago when all he and his son had been to one another were Elder Faelind and Lutha the thief. “My father was _not_ Elder of Law and Justice,” Faelind continued. “He was simply Elder of the Forest Law. I amended the title when I took the position. I did not – and do not – believe that one can enforce the law without justice.”

“But isn’t that what enforcing the law is?” Lutha asked slowly. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

“Justice is fairness, my little boy,” Faelind replied. “Fairness to the one who has been wronged and the one who has done wrong. Justice is why I sentenced you to a switching for trying to steal from Nithaniel forty years ago. But it was also for the sake of justice that I ordered your rehabilitation. There would have been no justice for you – that is, it would have been unfair – had you simply been turned loose and allowed to continue down the path that you were on.”

Lutha nodded slowly. “I think I understand. You know, you could just adopt this horse thief and rehabilitate him. You’re good at adopting thieves.”

“Thank you very much,” Faelind said with a soft laugh. “But the horse thief is an eighty year old Woodman in a semi-permanent state of drunkenness with fewer teeth in his head than you or I have fingers on our hands. He ought to be grateful that Master Merildir somehow found the restraint to send for the Protectors instead of knocking out the rest of his teeth when he found him atop the stallion, for Master Merildir is not an ellon particularly known for his gentle temper.”

“I’m not saying that I condone the old man’s behaviour but now I really want to go with you because he sounds funny,” Lutha said.

Faelind huffed in annoyance as he brought two cups of hot cocoa to the table and took a seat opposite his son. “Funny or not, he has been a thorn in my side for the last seventy years, and I have no doubt that until the day he dies he will keep sneaking back into our lands no matter how many times he is banished back to his mortal village. Now, enough about him. Tell me of your day, Luthavar. You were to be learning all about Dwarven customs today, were you not, ahead of your visit to Erebor next year?”

“That’s right,” Lutha said guardedly.

Something in his voice caught Faelind’s attention. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Lutha replied hastily. Too hastily, he knew, when his father’s green eyes narrowed. “I was just a bit distracted.”

“I am not pleased to hear that, Luthavar,” Faelind said quietly. “This is the third time in as many weeks that you have indicated a lack of concentration and focus.”

Lutha chewed the inside of his cheek and slumped a little in his chair. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m just worried about Galad and his horrible brothers, and I keep thinking about it when I know I should be paying attention to other things. But he’s my best friend. Should I just not think about it? And how do I even stop thinking about it when it’s in the back of my mind?”

“When you were having lessons with Elder Angoliel, she taught you to inform her if you were struggling with such things so that she could allow you to step outside for fresh air to clear your mind,” Faelind pointed out sternly. “There is nothing wrong with having such diverting thoughts but I do expect you to make a greater effort in curtailing them. You and I shall be having a less pleasant discussion about it if I hear that this has happened again. Is that quite clear, little boy?”

It really couldn’t have been clearer. “Yes, Ada.”

“Very well. I expect you to study for an hour before dinner to make up for your lapse of concentration,” Faelind added.

“I’ve done that. I was studying when you came home,” Lutha ventured.

“An hour, Luthavar Faelindion,” Faelind said sharply.

The part of Lutha’s mind that enjoyed self-preservation pointed out that he had already been threatened with discipline should he slip up again in his studies, and any father who had recently threatened his son with such a thing was not to be crossed any further in the same conversation. But the part of Lutha’s mind that enjoyed negotiating and challenging dared him to say, “Half an hour.”

“Enough,” Faelind warned him.

“How about forty minutes and I’ll write a note to Daernana Thureneth saying sorry.”

“How about you write one of those anyway and you do it sitting on a sore bottom.”

“An hour it is,” Lutha conceded.


	2. A Storm from the North

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A carefully laid plan goes awry and Lutha can only stand by helplessly as Galad learns some difficult truths

After a pleasant breakfast the next morning, Faelind left for his work on the hill while Lutha headed to Nestorion’s house where he was to meet Alphros and Galad for their visit to town. Privately, Lutha still had some misgivings about the whole thing, but none of the adults had objected as long as the three boys _stuck together._ Faelind had been most emphatic about that. But most importantly, this was what Galad wanted. Lutha could understand that. He had been that person. He had known that desire to stand up to someone, to look them in the eyes and say, “You hurt me but I’m not scared of you. Look at me. I’m living my life and you’re not part of it.” For that reason alone he would stand with his friend in whatever he needed to do.

When Lutha arrived at Nestorion’s house he was surprised to see Galad already waiting for him outside even though it was a chilly day. “Can we go inside until Alphros gets here?” he asked by way of greeting.

“There’s been a change of plan,” Galad replied dismissively. “Only you and I are going.”

“Why?”

“It doesn’t matter. Come, let’s go-”

Galad was interrupted by the sound of pained cries through a window that had been left ajar – pained cries in a voice that Lutha well recognised. “That’s Alphros!” he said, eyes widening. “Is Nestorion in the torture business now?”

“There is no such thing as _torture_ business, Luthavar,” Galad replied, in his usual taking-things-far-too-seriously way. “Alphros had an accident on his morning hunt and Elder Feredir brought him to Master Nestorion because they were closer to here than they were the healing house in town. It’s nothing serious. Are we going or not?”

“Not,” Lutha said incredulously. “It _sounds_ serious. What’s more serious than a hunting accident?”

“Many things,” Galad huffed. “Alphros got his foot caught in a rabbit hole and he twisted his ankle, that’s all. You know he has the worst tolerance for pain of anyone in the world. I was there when he arrived, and Master Nestorion sent me away to enjoy my day off, so it is certainly _not_ serious enough that he requires any assistance. Besides, Alphros said that he’ll catch up with us later. So can we please just go?”

Galad was already walking away. Lutha cast the house a doubtful glance before running to catch up with his friend. “I don’t think we should go into town when it’s just us two. We only got permission to go because there were going to be three of us.”

“So go home if you don’t want to come with me,” Galad said under his breath.

That annoyed Lutha enough that he caught the other boy by the arm and pulled him around so that they were facing one another. “Don’t be like that.”

“Sorry.” Breathing in deeply, Galad straightened his forest green cloak and gave his head a little shake to make his brown braids fall back over his shoulder. “I’m sorry. Lutha, I’ve been thinking about it and building it up in my mind all week, and if I don’t do it now then I’m afraid that I’ll lose my courage and I just won’t do it at all. And I _have_ to do it. I have to show my brothers that I’m not scared of them. Maybe I even have to show myself that I’m not scared of them. You really can go home if you want, Lutha. No hard feelings. Honest.”

“And let my best friend be kidnapped by the giant prickfaces,” Lutha muttered. “I don’t think so.”

For a moment Galad looked appalled. But then a small smile pulled at his lips. “Giant prickfaces. That’s funny.”

“I am funny,” Lutha agreed. “Come on. Let’s go. We can tell Alphros all about it later.”

They made their way along the road that led into the town of Amon Lanc where inns, cafés, shops, and other businesses surrounded a large outdoor marketplace. Along the way they kept up a steady stream of conversation, with Lutha venturing to ask if Galad’s brothers had made any contact with him since arriving in the south a week ago. They hadn’t, but Galad reported that they had gone hunting with their other brother Protector Noendir, taken tea with their Aunt Parveth, and made arrangements to visit their grandfather Captain-Protector Bregolas. All in all, they were perfectly playing the roles of dutiful brothers, nephews, and grandsons. Then Galad sighed and shook his head. They weren’t playing at any of those roles. They really were good nephews and grandsons, and they had always been good older brothers to Noendir. Lutha thought that Galad felt upset about that, because he swiftly changed the subject.

The market was open year round although some traders who had space to do it moved their goods inside when the seasons changed. It wasn’t quite cold enough yet for that, but Lutha noticed as they reached town and began wandering around the square that a group of ellyn were standing together and arguing about where to place the braziers this year as two had been knocked over the year before. Lutha couldn’t help but smile. The braziers coming out meant snow, and roasting chestnuts, and cups of hot cocoa. And all of that meant Yule, which was his favourite time of year.

“Is there anything you want to buy while we’re here?” When Lutha didn’t get an answer to his question, he glanced over to see that Galad was already scanning the crowds, his blue eyes dark with worry and tension in every inch of his slim body. Lutha gave him a light nudge to the arm. “Galad.”

“What? Oh.” Galad had caught his breath and he let it out slowly. “No.”

“I bet you didn’t even hear what I said,” Lutha complained.

“That’s not true!” Galad protested. “You said am I going to buy anything.”

Lutha nodded, mollified, but then a thought occurred to him. “Actually that’s not what I said. I said do you _want_ to buy anything?”

“Don’t be pedantic.”

“What does that mean again?”

After years of education and living amongst his own people, it was rare now for Lutha to come across a word that he did not know. He knew _pedantic_ but his feigned ignorance had the desired effect; Galad brightened somewhat, and if he still glanced around himself a little, he at least focused enough on Lutha to give him a thorough explanation of the word. Lutha listened so that he could nod dutifully in all the right places. Once upon a time, he never would have imagined that he could be friends with someone like Galad – studious, aloof, sensible (their current adventure notwithstanding) and he knew that Galad had thought quite the same about him. But somehow it worked, their wildly different personalities tempered and balanced by Alphros, and now Lutha couldn’t imagine _not_ being best friends with them.

“I think I’ll get cakes from the bakery,” Lutha decided. “And maybe sweets.”

“If you want,” Galad said with a small shrug. “I don’t need anything.”

“My father would say that I don’t need cakes or sweets,” Lutha replied. “But I’m still going to get them.”

They walked around some more, and Lutha was relieved as Galad relaxed ever so slightly with each minute that they did not see his eldest brothers. Lutha wondered if perhaps they had already left to return to their home in the north, but he didn’t voice that out loud. He didn’t want to jinx it. Besides, he had to reluctantly concede, Noendir would have surely rushed to tell Galad once Celegnir and Breigon were no longer a concern.

The sweet shop was busy with people wanting to try the new winter flavours that had just replaced the autumnal ones, especially the peppermint fudge and the winterberry sweets that had been set out on sample platters atop the counters. One of the two ellith who ran the shop was another of Galad’s aunts, being his father’s younger sister, and she gave them a cheerful wave from behind the counter before returning her attention to the family she was serving. Lutha understood that Mistress Ethirel did not get along well with her brother or his eldest sons, and as one of Galad’s staunchest supporters, she would _not_ have been on the list of people for Celegnir and Breigon to visit.

Galad and Lutha became separated as the same family that Ethirel had been serving made their way out of the shop with a gaggle of elflings in tow. The lull that followed lasted only a matter of seconds before more people streamed in from outside. Lutha lost sight of Galad then, and he huffed irritably as he made his way to the counter to pay for the cloth bag of sweets that he had picked up.

“You’re busy today,” he remarked.

Ethirel smiled ruefully at that. She didn’t look at all like Galad or indeed any of the other family members that Lutha had met, but when he had brought that up in conversation once, Galad had just shrugged and said that his grandfather had adopted Ethirel a long time ago. Ethirel was tall, but only because heeled boots disguised her diminutive height. The green and gold of her tailored tunic went well with the dark red hair tied out of her sparkling jade eyes, Lutha thought. He noticed things like that. 

“You’re welcome to help out, Lutha,” Ethirel suggested.

“You would go out of business so fast,” he replied. “I would eat all the sweets.”

“Well, that is one of the joys of working here,” Ethirel said with a smile. She glanced around the shop over the heads of her customers. “No Alphros today? It is unusual for the three of you not to be together.”

“He had a hunting accident,” Lutha explained. “Galad tells me it wasn’t serious.”

“It sounds serious…”

“Thank you! That’s what I said, but Galad seemed sure that everything was fine and that Alphros just has a really low pain tolerance. Which he does,” Lutha allowed.

“And how is Galad?” Ethirel asked, lowering her voice.

Lutha hesitated. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “Worried. But hiding it well.”

“Yes, he is good at hiding things, and we have my elder brother to thank for it,” Ethirel said under her breath. “Twelve coppers, please.”

Reaching into his pocket, Lutha pulled out a silver piece. “Have you seen Celegnir or Breigon at all?”

“Two of my nephews are welcome in my shop and two are not,” Ethirel replied, opening a drawer under the counter and starting to count out change for the silver piece. “Celegnir and Breigon know that I would have much to say to them if they dared show their faces here.”

“I think you would be scary when you’re mad,” Lutha offered.

“That’s so kind of you,” Ethirel said, with a sweet smile.

Lutha smiled back at her, and he tucked the bag of sweets into an inner pocket of his cloak while the coins that he was given back went into a small coin pouch. He said goodbye to Ethirel and slipped back through the crowded shop to where he had last seen Galad. The spot by the fudge counter, which was being tended to by Ethirel’s partner in all things, Lestoril, had been taken by someone else. Lestoril waved at Lutha when she noticed him, but he just gave her an uneasy smile. His unease turned to dread when he asked her if she had seen Galad and she replied that he had left a few minutes ago.

Silently cursing himself for lingering too long with Ethirel, Lutha made his way out of the shop and back into the marketplace. A winter wind had whipped up, and Lutha’s hair blew around his face and his cloak snapped at the back of his legs as he turned his head this way and that, searching for any sign of Galad. _Nothing._ His friend had vanished. Of his own accord? Maybe. Maybe not. Lutha rushed through the market, twisting past the people doing their shopping and darting between the stalls. He glanced through shop windows and he briefly detoured into the inns even though they were the last places Galad was likely to be.

Only by chance did Lutha find Galad, and he would have walked right past had he not done a double take and looked more closely down one of the side streets that led off the market square to the blacksmiths and farriers. Galad was standing a little way down the street with his back to the wall. The ellon standing in front of him had a fist twisted in Galad’s tunic and he was holding him hard against the wall so that he couldn’t move. Another ellon, taller than the other, was standing close by with his arms folded. Lutha had never met either of Galad’s brothers before, but he could guess which was which. The one holding Galad against the wall had to be Breigon, for Galad had spoken before of Breigon’s nasty temper while Celegnir always stood by and acted the kindly mediator.

Lutha moved slowly down the side street, quiet save for the distant ringing of a blacksmith hammering at the forge, and as he got nearer he could hear the soft and gentle timbre of Celegnir’s voice. No doubt coercing Galad to go home with them, Lutha thought angrily. He looked at Galad then, and it upset him to see his friend so cowed by the bullies. Maybe Galad had stood up to them before, in the minutes before Lutha had arrived, but now he wasn’t. Now his shoulders were slumped, his eyes on the floor, and he looked defeated and small. He was shaking his head mutely to whatever Celegnir was saying.

As Lutha got nearer, Celegnir glanced his way. He spoke quietly to Breigon, and the other ellon scowled and took his hand away from Galad’s chest. He didn’t move far though, and Lutha recognised his stance as one that was ready to intervene should Galad try and get away. Celegnir gave Lutha a polite smile and gestured down the street as if indicating that it was clear.

“What’s going on?” Lutha asked, and Galad’s eyes widened as he looked up.

“My apologies. We were in your way,” Celegnir replied smoothly. “Breigon, Galad. Come.”

Breigon reached out to take Galad by the upper arm but Lutha moved quickly and put himself between the two. Behind him, he heard Galad’s soft intake of breath. He ignored it and looked steadily at Breigon, whose dark brown hair was roughly braided in the same northern style as Galad usually braided his. That was as far as the similarities went. Galad’s eyes were a pretty dark blue, but Breigon’s were as hard and brown as a walnut. Galad was slender and lithe, but his brother had the broad shoulders and muscled arms of someone who had spent years and years chopping wood. And that mocking sneer, the threat in Breigon’s stance…Lutha had never seen that from Galad before and he knew he never would.

“I don’t think he wants to go with you,” Lutha said.

“You ought to keep your pretty nose out of business that doesn’t concern you,” Breigon retorted.

“That is such an oddly specific comment. But you’re right, I _do_ have a pretty nose,” Lutha said, sounding pleased. “I should hate for you to break it if this gets any further. So why don’t you just move along and we can all go about our day.”

Breigon smirked and looked over Lutha’s head at Galad. “Nice little champion you have here, baby brother. Who is he? Your lover?”

“My friend,” Galad said quietly, his arms wrapped tightly around himself.

“Little Galad making a friend out here in the big wide world,” Breigon mocked. “How sweet.”

“Friends,” Lutha snapped. “He has friends.”

Celegnir stepped forward then and gave Galad a kind smile that went all the way to his hazel eyes. In truth, Galad had been known to speak quite highly of his eldest brother, for Celegnir didn’t have Breigon’s short temper or mean streak and he had never been cruel or spiteful. But that didn’t mean anything to Lutha. He had seen more of the world than Galad, more of the people who lived in it, and he was much more wary of Celegnir than he was of Breigon. Brute strength and idle cruelty were easy enough to recognise, but the person who spoke pleasantly and smiled handsomely could just as quickly plunge a knife into your back.

“I’m glad that you have made friends down here in the south, Galad,” Celegnir said, and he sounded warm and sincere. Lutha still didn’t take his eyes off him, though. “Really I am. It is good for you to have friends. But you mustn’t abandon the people who raised you. Life doesn’t work like that. You can’t just throw away your family.”

“You threw _me_ away,” Galad said in quiet protest. “Once I started apprenticing with Master Nestorion you might as well have disowned me. I didn’t hear a thing from any of you for years. You never wrote to me on my Begetting Day or even just to ask how my apprenticeship was. And for years you never invited me home for Yule even though Noendir got an invite every single year.”

“As if you would have come,” Breigon scoffed.

“You’re right, because I wouldn’t have trusted Ada not to punish me,” Galad replied. “I wouldn’t have trusted him or you not to lock me in my room and keep me from returning here. No, I wouldn’t have come. But if we had started writing nice letters to one another and building trust, then I would have come home for visits. It never had to get this far.”

“What happened was regrettable,” Celegnir allowed quietly. “Adar was furious and that fury turned to stubborn pride. But he misses you, Galad. You’re his youngest son, his last child, and he wants a relationship with you. Don’t you think he’s proud of you? You’re the only one in the entire family to become a healer. You know how our father is; he doesn’t say much. But when he tells people about his son training to become a healer, I hear in his voice how proud he is. He wants nothing more than to tell you that himself. He just wants you back, Galad.”

Lutha had seen the blossom of hope in Galad’s eyes but it faded quickly. “You must think I’m stupid,” Galad said incredulously. “Yes, I know how our father is, and I know that he has _never_ told me that he’s proud of me. I don’t doubt he wants me back. But not the way that you’re trying to make it sound. He only wants me back so that things can return to the way they were, so that he can have me in his control again. I’ll write to him. I’ll do that. I’ll allow communication. But it has to be done safely.”

“You’ll _allow_ communication?” Breigon reached past Lutha and grabbed Galad by the arm, trying to pull him away from the wall, but the two younger ellyn pushed back at him. Lutha couldn’t speak for Galad, but for himself, he sneakily dug his nails into Breigon’s skin. Breigon snarled and jerked his arm back, flashing a venomous look at Lutha before turning his furious gaze on his youngest brother. “This has gone far enough. Your loyalty is to your family, Galadaelin. You’ll come home, _now_ , and you’ll face the punishment waiting for you. If I had my way you’d have a strapping every day for a year. But maybe Adar will be lenient. Maybe he won’t lock you in your room and maybe he’ll let you continue your studies with the village healer. Either way, this stops now.”

“Yes, it stops.” Lutha took a step closer to Breigon, and another, until there were only a few inches between them. “Galad told you that he’ll write. Personally I think that’s far more than you deserve especially as you’ve now threatened him. But he’s told you what he wants and you need to respect it.”

“And you need to back away from me right now, elfling,” Breigon said through gritted teeth.

“Leave,” Lutha replied.

“Galad,” Breigon said. “Why don’t you tell your friend here what happens to little boys who don’t do as they are told.”

“Lutha,” Galad began quietly.

But Lutha shook his head. “I don’t blame you for being afraid of your brothers, Galad. There’s no judgement here. But,” he added, and now his words were for Breigon, “I have known people who make bullies like you look like insignificant little ants. You don’t scare me. You could never. So make your threats. I don’t care. I’ll stand here for as long as it takes.”

Both Breigon and Lutha stood still and quiet, hatred pouring forth from Breigon’s hard eyes, and rage in the set of his jaw, while Lutha calmly held his gaze. It bothered Lutha, at least a little bit, that a small part of him wanted something to happen. Better for everyone if Breigon simply walked away, yes, of course. But that almost seemed too easy. Lutha wanted Breigon to pay for all the hurt he had ever caused Galad, and right then Lutha didn’t care how he paid. Later, Lutha would wonder if a wordless invitation had flickered in his eyes, for though he didn’t say anything, Breigon suddenly growled and shoved him roughly away.

Lutha might not have cared if the shove had only hurt him. But it didn’t. It flung him back into Galad and the collision sent Galad against the wall. The thud of Galad’s head hitting stone, the softly pained breath that he let out, made Lutha see red. He launched himself at Breigon and tried to push him in return, but Breigon was a tall elf and strong with eight hundred years behind him. He swiped Lutha aside so casually that the younger elf might have been little more than a fly annoying him. Lutha tried again, but this time he tripped Breigon so that the two of them went down together.

The brawl didn’t last long. The first person to try and separate them was Galad. He grabbed Breigon by the arm but his brother effortlessly shook him off, and he didn’t have a chance to try again because Celegnir caught him by the wrist and held him back. Lutha had to grudgingly give Breigon credit for not actually hitting him, especially when Lutha pummelled at Breigon with his fists. It rather seemed, as they rolled about in the middle of the street, that Breigon was simply trying to hold Lutha down and pin him like a wolf asserting dominance over a cub. Well, cubs could bite. A lifelong instinct buried deep made Lutha bare his teeth. He didn’t get to do more than that, for strong arms suddenly wound around his waist and he found himself being hauled to his feet.

“Enough,” a voice hissed in his ear. “You let me handle this.”

Lutha’s eyes went wide as he was released. He had thought that Feredir was with Alphros and Nestorion, so to see the hunter turning to stare down Celegnir and Breigon caught him off guard. “I fear that you have come across a disagreement that got out of hand,” Celegnir was saying in his smooth voice. He was no longer overtly holding Galad, but the two were standing close enough that Lutha thought he was probably gripping Galad’s wrist behind his back.

“I know exactly what I’ve come across,” Feredir retorted.

“Who is this, little Galad?” Breigon called. “Another friend?”

“You are not from these parts so I forgive you for not knowing me as Elder Feredir Rhuvenion. But I know who you are, Celegnir and Breigon Thranorion,” Feredir said coldly. “I have already witnessed you harassing the son and heir of Elder Faelind and the student of Master Healer Nestorion. So Celegnir, I suggest that you release your brother, and then you and your other brother had better start walking.”

Lutha knew that he had been right about Celegnir secretly holding Galad by the wrist, for Galad moved away from him the instant he was able to and came to stand by Lutha instead. “If you know who we are then you know that we are simply trying to reconcile with our baby brother who has long been absent from us,” Celegnir said tightly. “We didn’t come here for a fight. This meeting has not gone the way that we wanted or expected it to go.”

“You expected that I would just meekly go home with you and forget my life here,” Galad said.

“Enough,” Feredir snapped with a flash of green eyes. The usually cheerful young Elder pointed at the wall. “Galadaelin, Luthavar, you both stand there and don’t say a word. You two are in enough trouble without making it worse for yourselves.” He turned then to Celegnir and Breigon. “Go home. Go home and tell your father that his son is safe and happy. Tell him that he is excelling in his studies and that he is surrounded by people who care for him. Tell him that there are to be no more attempts at stealing Galad away, that Galad will return when _he_ is ready. Go. Now.”

“It is done, muindor,” Celegnir said quietly, putting his hand on Breigon’s shoulder. “We’re going.”

“Fine,” Breigon snarled. He pointed his finger at his youngest brother. “But you owe us, little Galad. Don’t ever forget that. Because we won’t.”

The two ellyn turned and started to walk away up the street, but Galad stepped away from the wall. “What do you mean?”

“Leave it,” Lutha said softly. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No, I want to know,” Galad insisted. “Why do I owe you, Breigon? What makes you think I could possibly owe you after everything that you and our father put me through?”

Galad’s brothers had both stopped. Celegnir didn’t even look around, but Breigon took a few deep breaths that made his shoulders rise and fall inside his leather jerkin before turning and striding back down the street. He stopped a short distance away with Feredir standing between him and the boys, and he looked straight past the hunter into Galad’s eyes. “You owe us because we raised you. You owe us because your _family_ deserves your loyalty and respect. And,” Breigon added, in a way that made Lutha tense, “you owe us because we would still have a mother were it not for you.”

Feredir had stiffened and Galad was frozen in place, so the only two people to move were Celegnir and Lutha. Celegnir went to Breigon’s side and tried in vain to draw him away while Lutha put his arm around Galad’s waist. “You don’t need to hear this,” he whispered. “Your brother is lying.”

“There are no lies here,” Breigon promised.

“Come on, we’re going,” Celegnir said sharply. “Galad _doesn’t_ need to hear this.”

“Why?” Breigon demanded, shaking his brother off his arm.

“This isn’t right,” Celegnir began.

“Tell me,” Galad said distantly.

For the first time, Lutha truly believed what he was seeing from Celegnir. The sorrow in his eyes was real. He didn’t want Galad to hear this. But Breigon spoke. “Did you never wonder why our mother was out in the middle of a winter storm, Galad? It was because of you. You had lost your bear. You couldn’t find him anywhere and you were inconsolable. So Naneth went out to hunt rabbit. She was going to make you a new bear and use the rabbit fur to make it soft. She thought she could do her hunting before the storm hit. But she was wrong. She died and everything changed that day. But you know the worst thing?”

“Don’t,” Celegnir said quietly.

Ignoring him, Breigon took a step closer to Galad. “The worst thing is that the day after she died, you came running to us with your stupid bear clutched in your little hands. You had found him down the side of your bed. You were so happy, Galad. Never in my life had I known what it was like to hate. To really, truly hate. But you changed that. You turned our father into what he is now. You robbed Noendir of the chance to have a mother for as long as Celegnir and I did. So when I say that you owe us, baby brother, don’t think for a second that those are just empty words. You do owe us. And you had better believe that one day we’ll collect on that debt.”

Breigon turned on his heel and strode away up the street towards the marketplace. Celegnir moved towards Galad with a pained look on his fair face, but Feredir was there in an instant, stepping between them. There was little age difference between Feredir and Celegnir, but as the young Elder drew himself up he looked to be imbued with all the power of the forest that he served. “Leave,” he said, deadly quiet. “I will have you arrested if you are still in this part of the wood by sunset. Leave.”

With a final look for Galad, Celegnir left. Cautioning the boys to stay where they were, Feredir followed Celegnir up to the end of the street and stood there to watch the brothers out of sight. Lutha’s focus was wholly on his best friend. He spoke quietly to him, but Galad’s eyes were glazed and he didn’t seem to hear a single word. Lutha took him by the arm and guided him to sit outside a closed shop on the other side of the street. He didn’t try to speak again. It wasn’t the right time. He just sat quietly with Galad, one arm wrapped around his shoulders.

When Feredir returned, Lutha got up and walked to meet him a short distance away from Galad. “Feredir, I-”

“I am _furious_ with you, little brother,” Feredir interjected harshly, jabbing his finger into Lutha’s chest.

“Furious with me?” Lutha rubbed his chest as he regarded the hunter warily. “What are you even doing here? I thought you were with Alphros and Nestorion.”

“Nestorion asked me to track down you pair of fools when he realised that you were nowhere to be found,” Feredir retorted.

“It’s not Lutha’s fault,” Galad said distantly. “I wanted to come. He said no.”

Folding his arms over his chest, Feredir fixed Lutha with a stern stare. “Unless you put up much more than a token protest I am still very much furious with you. There was a reason you boys only had permission to come into town if all three of you were present and _this_ is it. Safety, Luthavar Faelindion. You ought to think yourself lucky that I’m not bending you over and warming your deserving backside right here and now!” Feredir shot Lutha such a ferocious look as he strode past him that Lutha pressed himself back against the wall to protect his bottom. Feredir snorted and shook his head as he went to one knee in front of Galad. “And you,” he said, his voice somewhat gentler. “The only reason I’m not roundly scolding you is because you’ve had a shock and you’re not in the right state of mind to appreciate all the names that I want to call you.”

“I just wanted to…” Galad closed his eyes. No tears fell down his cheeks but Lutha could see them glistening beneath his lashes. “I thought…I didn’t think…”

Lutha winced. It wasn’t like Galad to struggle for words. He watched Feredir nod sympathetically and give Galad’s shoulder a squeeze. “Ah. Not thinking. The bane of many an elfling’s life. Now, when you are ready, I will take you home.”

“I’m fine,” Galad said quietly, taking a deep breath as he stood. “I want to go home now.”

Feredir nodded and got to his feet. He leaned down to brush dust from his leggings, and as he straightened he caught Lutha by the shoulder and pulled him in for a one-armed hug. “Just because I’m furious it doesn’t mean I don’t still love you. You know that, right?”

“Obviously you love me. I’m delightful,” Lutha said, though he couldn’t help the relief that rushed through him.

Nothing was said on the way back to Nestorion’s house for there was nothing _to_ be said. Not right then, anyway. How did one possibly find the words after something like…that? Lutha didn’t know so he didn’t try. He just kept a close watch on Galad as they walked. Galad had never been one for great displays of emotion, and true to character he was quiet and withdrawn, his eyes lowered and the expression on his face suggesting that his mind was somewhere far away. When Lutha looked anxiously at Feredir, the hunter just nodded silently in the direction that they were walking in. Lutha understood. They were going back to Nestorion, and he would know what to do.

Indeed, Nestorion was waiting for them when they got there. The first thing he did was hug Galad and Lutha. The second thing he did was hold them at arm’s length and look them up and down for any signs of harm. The third and final thing he did was sternly order Galad straight to his room with instructions to take Lutha with him. Galad went without a word, but Lutha hesitated. “I need to talk to you first, Nestorion.”

“Very well,” Nestorion said shortly. He pointed to a door on the right. “In there. Sit.”

Lutha went into the living room though Nestorion stayed out in the hallway with Feredir. While the hunter and the healer spoke together in quiet voices, Lutha was greeted by Alphros sitting on the sofa with his left ankle bandaged and propped on a cushion atop a stool that had been placed in front of him. The young hunter folded his arms over his chest and there was an accusing light in his blue eyes as he ran them over Lutha. “I can’t believe you two went without me,” he said. “We were _supposed_ to go together. All three of us.”

“You could have not done that,” Lutha said, pointing at his friend’s bandaged ankle.

Alphros scowled, but it was directed at his own ankle rather than at Lutha. “I know. I’m going to be out of action for weeks. So annoying.”

“I’m fine, by the way,” Lutha added. “And Galad. We met his brothers.”

That caught the other boy’s attention. Alphros looked up and stared. “What? What happened?”

Lutha filled him in as much as he could before Nestorion strode in with Feredir a few paces behind. Feredir sat next to Alphros, but Nestorion remained standing and looked sharply at Lutha. “You wanted to talk.”

“I did. I do. I just want to tell you what your priorities need to be,” Lutha said.

Nestorion raised his eyebrows and folded his arms over his chest. “I can’t wait to hear this. Tell me all about my priorities, then.”

“Galad had some time alone with his brothers before I found them,” Lutha began, getting straight to the point. “I don’t know if they hurt him but Breigon was holding him hard against the wall when I turned up. He might be bruised. And you should definitely check his head because he hit it against the wall and I heard the sound it made. It wasn’t nice. I’m telling you because Galad wouldn’t bother mentioning it even though he would absolutely get all, well, _him_ on anyone else who dared hide an injury.”

“Thank you.” Though Nestorion’s voice was grave, the severity had left it and he just sounded concerned now. “Is there anything else, Lutha?”

“Yes.” Lutha paused and took a deep breath. “Breigon said awful things to Galad. Really awful things. He said…he said that Galad was the reason their mother died.”

_“Bastard!”_

Without taking his eyes off Lutha, Feredir put his arm out to the side and covered Alphros’ mouth with his hand. “Go on, Lutha.”

“Thanks. And Alphros is right. Breigon was a real bastard,” Lutha said quietly. He looked up at Nestorion. “I know that you’re angry with us. I know that we’re going to be punished. I just don’t want that to be the first thing you deal with when you go to Galad.”

“It will not be,” Nestorion promised with a heavy sigh. “I am glad that you told me this, Lutha. I have taken it to heart and you have my word that I will see to Galad’s hurts, those that are visible and those that are not, before anything else.”

“Alphros and I will leave you to it,” Feredir said. “Though I would ask for the use of a horse to get Alphros home.”

Nestorion nodded distractedly. “By all means. Lutha, I had intended to deal with you and Galad together. But…”

“It’s fine, I’ll hand myself in to my father and confess everything,” Lutha said. “Or I might not.”

That caught Nestorion’s attention and refocused him. “You will,” he said sharply. “I shall be speaking with Faelind tomorrow to be sure of it.”

“Wonderful,” Lutha sighed.


	3. A Storm from the South

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lutha knows that he has no choice but to confess his misadventures to Faelind. Whilst doing his best to put it off, he makes an unexpected new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1: As per tags this chapter contains spanking as a form of parental discipline. 
> 
> Note 2: Happy New Year to all of my readers. I am so grateful for every one of you! I have posted a holiday-themed Lutha and Elthoron short fic which can be found here - https://archiveofourown.org/works/28287144 I'm looking forward to being able to share more of their story with you in 2021!

Home was not the first thing on Lutha’s mind when he left Nestorion’s house. He detoured into town to discreetly find out if Celegnir and Breigon were still there, but the innkeeper at The Great Oak told him that they had paid for their rooms and left quickly not an hour ago. That stirred a curious blend of relief and disappointment in Lutha, for while he was glad that they were gone, he also would have dearly loved them to stay long enough that they got arrested. _Oh well._ He left town too, but even though he was in a remarkably large amount of trouble, he still didn’t go home. Not that he felt too badly about that. His father was working and wouldn’t be home until afternoon. There would be time later, and plenty of it, for Lutha to go home and confess to his risk taking, a thing that Faelind took a _very_ dim view of.

Already resigned to his fate, Lutha wandered along the forest paths until he came to one oak tree in particular. He had sought refuge in that tree before, and he knew that her curved boughs were comfortable and her voice soothing when it brushed his mind. It was almost like being cradled, he reflected, as he climbed up through the branches, if being cradled involved sometimes digging out a splinter or sharing space with a woodland creature. The tree must have sensed his desire for peace, for she left him alone as he settled down in her boughs, simply trailing a branch over his hair and letting a light breeze blow comfortingly through her leaves with the scent of wildflowers and wood.

The incident with Galad’s brothers played over and over in Lutha’s head like a recurring and horribly vivid dream. Despite everything, the brawling and the verbal sparring and Breigon’s cruel parting shot, there was one thing that stuck out to Lutha more than anything else. He’d not had time to give it any thought when it had happened. Now, looking back, he saw it as clear as day – the look on Galad’s face when he had realised that Lutha was there. It had not been relief that he was about to be rescued. It had been shame. And that was something that Lutha understood.

It was one thing to share trauma with your friends or family. It was something else to have a loved one see you in the midst of that trauma, to see you broken and weak. Lutha had often cringed in the aftermath of a nightmare when Faelind had walked in on him tossing and turning and crying into pillows already wet with tears. Even though Faelind had never judged him or scorned him, Lutha had still felt shamed by it. So he understood. He understood why Galad, who in some ways was a closed book next to Lutha, would feel humiliated to have been caught in a moment of vulnerability. That made Lutha angry all over again even though he had thought that he was done being angry. The memory of what Celegnir and Breigon – especially Breigon, he thought with a flash of his eyes – had put his beloved friend through just brought all that rage bubbling up to the surface.

Someone was standing under the tree.

So out of the blue was that realisation that Lutha sat up quickly and would have toppled right out of his branch-hammock if the tree herself had not steadied him. Murmuring to her in quiet thanks, he squinted suspiciously down through the leaves as the _someone_ slowly turned their head from side to side. A flash caught his eye, the glint of sunlight on hair that was a dark shade of red; not bright red like Alphros but a more woody sort of auburn or mahogany, reminding him of Thureneth or even Nestaeth or Nestorion. But the person down below was none of those people. This person was dressed for travelling with a winter cloak clasped at their neck and a leather pack slung over one shoulder.

The someone lifted their head and looked unerringly at Lutha’s hiding spot. He shrank back against the tree, prompting a soft laugh from down below. “Why do you hide so high off the ground?” The voice was light and friendly. It made Lutha think that the ellon who owned it probably had friendly eyes. Still, he said nothing and simply willed the stranger to move on. “Perhaps you are a little squirrel that you do not speak to me.”

Lutha puffed his cheeks and blew out a breath of frustration. “Not to be rude, but the reason I’m not speaking to you is because I just don’t want to. Can you go away, please.”

“Oh, a polite squirrel,” the ellon laughed. “Come down and let me see you.”

“You can’t just come up to someone’s tree and tell them to come out of it,” Lutha snapped. “Now go away or I shall become a less polite squirrel.”

Amusement coloured the voice that drifted up from the forest floor. “Can you blame me for wishing to know who sits above me?”

“Nobody asked you to stop under this tree and make conversation,” Lutha complained. He hesitated then as a thought occurred to him. “I suppose you might as well be useful if you’re not going to leave me alone. Have you seen Elder Faelind?”

“Elder Faelind?”

“Yes! Have you seen him?”

The ellon was so quiet that Lutha almost began to wonder if he had moved on, but he replied just when Lutha began to shift restlessly. “I can’t say that I have.”

Of the few ways to get home from the not-palace atop the great hill of Amon Lanc, this was the quickest and the second prettiest, so it was the one that Faelind took most often. That the ellon standing down below had not seen him anywhere along the path suggested that Faelind was probably still at work. Good, Lutha thought. He could stay in his tree. “If you do see him and he asks if you’ve seen me, please tell him no,” Lutha said aloud. “And that won’t be a lie because you haven’t seen me. You’ve only heard me.”

“How will I know if he is asking about you? I don’t know who you are,” the auburn annoyance pointed out.

“Luthavar Faelindion,” Lutha said impatiently.

“A pleasure to meet you, Luthavar Faelindion,” the ellon replied. “I am Torchanar.”

Lutha had trouble-related concerns which meant that he really didn’t care, but his manners had improved enough during his years in the forest that he didn’t say so. Instead he just said, “Lovely,” and climbed to a higher branch. It wasn’t as comfortable as the one before, but it didn’t need to be. It only needed to make the point that Lutha wasn’t interested in conversation.

“So,” Torchanar remarked idly, and as Lutha peered down through the branches he was enraged to see that the ellon had seated himself on one of the exposed tree roots. “Why are you hiding from your father, Luthavar?”

“I’m not!” Lutha protested. “I’m just enjoying peace and quiet. Or I was until there was a disturbance. That’s you,” he added under his breath. “You’re the disturbance.”

Even though Lutha hadn’t meant for Torchanar to hear those words, Torchanar heard them anyway, and he threw back his head and laughed. “I see. Well, you may not be hiding from your father but you _certainly_ aren’t in any hurry to see him. Having had elflings myself, and indeed having once been an elfling, it seems quite clear to me that you have found trouble for yourself.”

“I’m six thousand and eighty-two years old,” Lutha said.

Torchanar snorted. “You’re not.”

“No,” Lutha said glumly. “I’m one hundred and eight.”

“That sounds more like it,” Torchanar agreed. “Why don’t you come down and tell me all about it? A problem shared is a problem halved, after all. Or so they say.”

It took Lutha a few minutes to make up his mind and begin his descent. He jumped from one of the lower branches and landed like a cat, and as he straightened it didn’t escape his notice that Torchanar was staring at him. It only lasted briefly before the ellon gave himself a slight shake and nodded in polite greeting. Lutha nodded back and returned the favour by taking a moment to stare at Torchanar. He was tall and lithe like a young tree, and the dark red hair that Lutha had glimpsed from above was swept out of his face in a high half-tail. His clothing under his winter cloak was not the fine silks and brocades that Lutha was used to seeing on his father, but it was well made even so; deerskin leggings and scuffed leather boots, with a suede jerkin over a good linen shirt, and a belt worn at an angle with knives and pouches hanging from it. Lutha wondered if the ellon was a hunter, for the clothing made him think somewhat of the hunting leathers that Feredir and Alphros wore. But the earrings glittering in Torchanar’s ears were not those of a hunter, and neither was the silver ring set with lapis lazuli nor his pendant of a raven in flight clutching an egg-shaped cabochon moonstone.

“Now that we have finished taking one another’s measure,” Torchanar said with a touch of dry humour, “I feel that I must be a responsible adult and advise you that you cannot hide forever. Sooner or later you will have to face your father.”

“Much later hopefully,” Lutha replied.

“Sooner would go better for you.”

“But that’s a problem for future me,” Lutha said. “Me right now doesn’t have to worry about it.”

A laugh followed Torchanar’s startled expression. “A fascinating way of looking at it. I suppose you have a point.” He paused then and gave Lutha a long look, his head canted slightly to one side in deep thought. “You are most interesting, Luthavar Faelindion. I regret that our paths might soon diverge.”

“Walk me home if you like,” Lutha offered with a shrug. He usually erred on the side of cautious suspicion when it came to new people, but Torchanar seemed not to be like most new people who were adults. For a start, he hadn’t pushed to find out what Lutha had done to be in trouble and nor had he expressed any disapproval whatsoever over the fact that Lutha was even in trouble in the first place. That was an immediate point in his favour. Besides, there was something about Torchanar that made Lutha curious. Whether it was his casual clothing so at odds with his fine jewels, or the pack that he had just picked up from the ground and slung over his shoulder, Lutha couldn’t say. He just felt…drawn, in a way that he wasn’t able to explain.

“Do you make a habit of inviting strange elves back to your home?” Torchanar asked pointedly.

“No,” Lutha admitted. “But if you were going to murder me you would just do it right here while there’s nobody around. You wouldn’t wait to get me home. But I suppose I had better ask the responsible question: you’re _not_ planning on murdering me, are you?”

“As it happens, murder is not on my agenda for today,” Torchanar replied. “Tomorrow is clear, too.”

“What about the day after?”

“I’m uncertain.”

Lutha laughed and gestured for his new friend to follow him as he set off along the path. “Are you from Greenwood?”

“Hmm, I travel a lot,” Torchanar said vaguely. “I have not been to the Greenwood before. Not this part of it, anyway. I find it very beautiful.”

That instilled such a sense of pride in Lutha that he couldn’t help smiling widely. “It _is_ beautiful. You should visit Caldron Pool and the Great Falls, and the Temple of Greenwood which has pretty gardens to walk in. Oh, and definitely go to the top of Amon Lanc and see the not…I mean, the palace. Everyone calls it a palace but it isn’t really. And the best sweet shop is owned by Mistress Ethirel and Mistress Lestoril. They sell so many different flavours of fudge, you could have a different flavour every day for a month and you still wouldn’t have tried them all. Oh, and…” Lutha stopped. He had only just realised that Torchanar was looking at him with a strangely sad smile. “What?”

“Nothing,” Torchanar replied, shaking his head. “You just reminded me of someone. My youngest niece. You have a similar way of speaking.”

“Maybe I’ve met her,” Lutha ventured. “Does she live here?”

“She died,” Torchanar said quietly. “Long ago. In Doriath.”

Lutha sank his teeth into his lower lip. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. And don’t bite your lip, you’ll make it bleed,” Torchanar added.

Obediently releasing his lip as they continued their walk along the path, Lutha cast around for something else to talk about. “Have you got anywhere to stay yet? I can tell you all about the best places in town, and the not best places too.” That seemed like a safe topic that wouldn’t remind Torchanar of any dead family members, Lutha thought.

They kept up a steady stream of conversation until finally they reached home. Torchanar looked at the grand house of white brick with its fountain at the front and the beautiful gardens spread out around it, and he smiled slightly and gave a nod as if of approval. He was holding back though, Lutha noticed, as he turned to look at the older ellon. “Would you like to come in? You’ve not murdered me yet, and you did walk me all the way home. The least I can do is offer you a drink.”

“That sounds nice, thank you,” Torchanar said.

Lutha turned back to open the front door but it was opened for him from the other side. His eyes widened and he stepped back in shock at the sight of his father standing there with a distinctly stern look on his handsome face. “Ada! I thought that you would still be working. I didn’t expect you to be home already.”

“And I expected you to _be_ home already,” Faelind replied severely. “Given the tale that I heard from Nestorion when I called in to see if you had returned from your visit into town.”

“You already know,” Lutha whispered in dismay, even though part of him was relieved that confessing had been taken out of his hands.

“Yes, I know, and I…”

Faelind had stopped. He was staring past Lutha at the ellon standing a short distance away. “This is Torchanar,” Lutha said hastily. “He’s my friend.”

“I see.” Placing a hand on Lutha’s shoulder, Faelind drew him closer to his side though his eyes didn’t leave Torchanar. “Well met, Master Torchanar.”

“Elder Faelind,” Torchanar replied, bowing his head slightly.

Lutha looked slowly between the two ellyn. “Do you already know one another?”

“I have never met a Master Torchanar in my life,” Faelind replied. “But I am interested to know how the two of you know each other – and why this is the first I am hearing of it.”

“Forgive me, but Luthavar and I only met a short while ago,” Torchanar interjected. “You have a wonderful son, Elder Faelind.”

The look that Faelind gave Lutha made the elfling think that was probably in question right then. “I thought that Torchanar was nice so I said that he could walk home with me, Ada. And then when we got here I invited him in for a drink but then you opened the door and now here we are. I think that’s a good thing, though. You can talk to Torchanar about the best places to stay and where he should visit while he’s here. I already gave him some ideas.”

“By all means. You are welcome to come in for a refreshment, Master Torchanar.” Faelind stepped aside and gestured for Torchanar to enter. Once the other ellon was past, Faelind bent his head to say quietly in Lutha’s ear, “Don’t you think for a moment that this saves you from trouble, little boy. You and I have much to discuss and we are going to do it right now.”

“But there’s a guest,” Lutha whispered.

“Right now, Luthavar Faelindion,” Faelind replied in a sharp hiss. “Get to your room. Now.”

Lutha scowled and just about managed to stop himself from stomping moodily through the marble foyer. He could feel Faelind watching him to make sure that he did as he was told, so he walked all the way to the top of the stairs. Once he had heard the front door close, he crept back down the stairs until he was at the halfway point. There he stopped and peered over the bannister, listening. He could hear Torchanar and Faelind in the sitting room. He couldn’t help a sneaking suspicion that there had been some sort of recognition when Faelind had first laid eyes on Torchanar, and so he listened for any sign of his father speaking to their visitor like a long lost friend. Or enemy, he supposed. But the brief conversation between the two ellyn was just as formal as it had been before. Master Torchanar this, Elder Faelind that. Lutha listened for long enough to hear Faelind pour Torchanar a glass of wine and bid him sit and rest after his travels, and then he hastily drew back, for he could hear his father leaving the sitting room.

It took some minutes more for Faelind to come to Lutha’s bedroom. The reason for the delay was immediately apparent when Faelind stepped into the room; he had taken a detour to his study, for in his hand was an oval paddle crafted of fine leather. Lutha swallowed and made himself look away from it. A few months had passed since he had last misbehaved enough to earn a paddling from his father. Not that he had expected anything less, though. Not for this.

“Firstly,” Faelind said quietly, when he had closed the door behind himself, “I wish to be certain that you are well, Luthavar. Nestorion told me that you were uninjured and unharmed, but I would like to hear that from you.”

“I’m not hurt,” Lutha promised without hesitation.

“Despite brawling on the floor with an ellon twice your size?” Faelind asked, ice seeping into his voice.

_Oh_. So he really did know everything. “Despite that,” Lutha agreed with a sigh.

Faelind nodded briefly and took a seat on the edge of the bed. He placed the paddle just within reach and turned his stern gaze upon Lutha. “The agreement that I came to with Nestorion and Feredir was that should Galadaelin wish to go into town while his eldest brothers were known to be in the area, he would only be permitted to do so with an adult; or, should he not wish to have an adult escort him, that he may go with you and Alphros. Not with you _or_ Alphros. With both of you. And that was only providing that all three of your respective guardians knew where you were and had given permission. The three of you agreed to that. Did you not?”

“Yes, Ada,” Lutha said quietly.

“Was there any confusion regarding the rules?” Faelind asked. “Were they unclear in any way?”

Lutha shook his head with another sigh. “No.”

“No. So I would like you to tell me why you deemed it acceptable to break both rules,” Faelind said.

“I didn’t break _both_ rules,” Lutha protested under his breath. “You gave me permission to go into town today. You knew that I was going to be there.”

“That permission was granted on the understanding that Alphros would be present,” Faelind snapped. “It ended the moment you discovered that he was injured and not in a fit state to accompany you. And don’t you dare try and tell me that you didn’t know that, little boy, because I have it on good authority from Nestorion that you told Galadaelin that going to town was not a good idea. I commend you for that, at least. But it was nothing more than a token protest. Was it?”

“Galad was desperate to go and he would have gone without me,” Lutha replied defensively. “I couldn’t let him do that.”

“You _could_ have informed Nestorion or asked Feredir to accompany you while Alphros was being taken care of,” Faelind retorted. He fell silent to let Lutha digest those two options that had truly not seemed like options at the time, but he was silent only for a moment. “You are not the only one at fault, Luthavar,” Faelind continued. “I hold Galadaelin equally to blame if not more, though I am not heartless and I do understand his desire to face his brothers and even your feeling that you must be with him as he did so. And on that point, I wish you to know that both Nestorion and I are proud of you for how you stood by your friend in his moment of need.”

“Thank you,” Lutha said quietly, even though he sensed a _but_ hanging unspoken in the air.

“But that does not mean I have any tolerance for you placing yourself in a dangerous situation,” Faelind added in a low voice. “Nor will I ever, _ever,_ let it go unanswered when you break rules laid down for your safety. So.”

That tiny word was laden with finality and meaning. Lutha breathed out as he took a moment to prepare himself for what was to come. Not that any amount of preparation ever truly helped. He was relieved – and surprised by his own relief – when he stepped to Faelind’s side, lowered himself down into position, and felt his father briefly run a hand over his hair. He had not feared losing Faelind’s love or affection. He had never lost it before and he wasn’t about to now. But all the same, this was the worst trouble he had been in for quite some time, so he was grateful for that reassurance even if what was going to happen…well, happened.

The first part of the spanking was delivered over Lutha’s leggings with his tunic pushed up out of the way. They offered little protection other than serving as something of a barrier between Lutha’s upturned bottom and Faelind’s hard hand as one minute of warming up turned into two and then three and then, to Lutha’s dismay, four. He pressed his lips tightly together and picked at a little thread coming loose on his bedcover. But there was no opportunity to let his mind wander. Faelind always seemed to know when he tried to distract himself from his discipline, and landed firmer flurries of smacks to focus him when it was needed.

When Lutha’s leggings came down and it was to his bare bottom that the next round of smacks began to fall, he stopped playing with the thread and turned his face into his arms instead. He kept his lips together but little whimpers and sounds of discomfort crept out anyway. Mostly Faelind kept his attention on Lutha’s bottom cheeks, but that was interspersed with regular rounds of a dozen smacks to the sensitive spots where Lutha would really feel it when he sat down. Lutha couldn’t help groaning in tearful protest each time he felt Faelind’s hand move slightly lower.

It felt like an age before Faelind paused and picked up the paddle. He shifted Lutha further forwards over his knee and tapped the cool leather firmly against the elfling’s reddened bottom. “You will remember this lesson, Luthavar,” he said, his voice quiet.

“Y-yes, Ada,” Lutha whispered miserably.

Faelind nodded briefly and drew the paddle back. It landed with a loud _thwack_ on Lutha’s left cheek, a sound that was mirrored moments later on the right. Hissing in a breath between his teeth, Lutha went up onto his elbows. There was no pause as Faelind settled into a steady rhythm that ensured that not a single inch of Lutha’s bottom was left untouched. Lutha hadn’t been boasting earlier that day when he had said that he had a high tolerance for pain. He did. But he cried like a little boy as his father soundly paddled him.

By the time it came to an end, Lutha had sobbed apologies, kicked his legs, and promised over and over that he would never do it again and that he would be a good boy for the rest of his life. Through his tears, he had heard Faelind chuckle in fond sympathy at that. The paddle was set aside and Lutha felt himself being lifted up for a cuddle. He was so sore and upset that he couldn’t even be cross with Faelind for having laughed at him.

“You are a good boy, Luthavar. My good boy who I love very much,” Faelind murmured. “Misbehaviour does not change that.”

“S-sorry,” Lutha breathed into his father’s tunic, for that was all he could say right then.

Faelind gave him a kiss to the top of his head. “I know you are. It is done now and you are forgiven.”

“Do you think Torchanar will m-mind if I go to b-bed even though I brought him home?” Lutha whispered, looking up.

“I am sure he is quite reasonable about such things,” Faelind replied as he gently dried the elfling’s tears. “But I do hope that you won’t get into the habit of bringing home strange elves as if they were stray pets.”

That prompted a weak and watery smile from Lutha. “I’ll try not to.”

“Good boy,” Faelind said softly.

Lutha couldn’t bring himself to get up from the hug that Faelind had enfolded him in, but when he finally did, he removed all his lower clothing so that he was only in his shirt and his just above knee length tunic. While Faelind drew back the bedcovers, Lutha crossed uncomfortably to the window to draw the curtains. But there he hesitated, tilting his head in thought as he gazed out into the gardens. “Torchanar is outside, Ada.” He looked up as Faelind came to his side, and pointed to the ellon standing at the far edge of the garden with his back to the house. “It looks as though he is watching the sky.”

“So it does.” Faelind put a hand on Lutha’s shoulder and guided him away from the window, but Lutha noticed that he paused with his eyes on Torchanar for a moment before firmly pulling the curtains across. “Perhaps he wished for some air,” Faelind added. “I will speak with him while you are resting, Luthavar. Into bed now.”

It took Lutha plenty of time and squirming until he managed to get even remotely comfortable, though he still couldn’t ignore the burn left behind from the unpleasant combination of Faelind’s hand and the paddle. “Don’t let me sleep too long,” Lutha said with a sigh.

“I shall wake you in plenty of time for dinner.” Faelind tucked Lutha in snugly and leaned down to kiss his temple. “Sleep well, my little boy.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Faelind stayed with Lutha for as long as it took the elfling to fall asleep, and that was not long at all. Picking up the paddle, he returned it to the drawer in his study that he had removed it from not so long ago. Discipline was not an aspect of fatherhood that he enjoyed, and having to be as hard as _that_ brought him no joy at all. Not being one to shy away from duty did not mean that Faelind had to find it easy. Not that Lutha would have any sympathy for him, he thought with a wry smile. And not that he would expect any.

His smile faded as his thoughts turned elsewhere. _Torchanar._ Now there was a mystery wrapped up in a memory. Not one that he had expected to face that day, and truth be told, not one that he had ever expected to face. But there it was. Best to deal with it now while Lutha was asleep and then Torchanar could be on his way. Eru forbid he still be hanging around when Lutha woke with a hundred questions.

Drawing in a deep breath, Faelind went outside and walked through the gardens until he reached the east side of the house. He glanced up at Lutha’s window but the curtains were still closed. A long trellis draped with clematis and climbing roses released its fragrance as Faelind passed through it, and as he came out the other side he could see the ellon with the mahogany hair up ahead at the edge of the garden. Torchanar was still, his arms over his chest and his head tilted back. It did look as though he was watching the sky.

“I did not look to see you here in the Greenwood, Master Torchanar,” Faelind remarked, clasping his hands behind his back as he stood next to the other ellon. “Or should I say…Baralin.”

Baralin Ravondirion bared his teeth in a strange smile. “Faelind.”

“It has been years since our first meeting in Harad,” Faelind added carefully. “I had hoped to leave that journey in the past.”

“And yet the past so often catches up with us, does it not,” Baralin replied.

“Indeed,” Faelind said, conceding the point with a slight nod. “But I recall how you said that you could not bring yourself to come to the Greenwood, so I must ask: why are you here?”

“An important question. But not as important as mine.” Baralin turned to face Faelind. His eyes looked nothing like Faelind remembered them; not even anything like they had just an hour ago when Lutha had brought him to the door. They had been warm then, deep indigo pools that had put Faelind in mind of a summer evening after the sun was gone but before the stars emerged, when splashes of purple coloured the sky like paint on a canvas. Now they were dark and cold hollows as Baralin spoke words that turned Faelind’s blood to ice. “Why didn’t you tell me that you had my son?” 


	4. When Worlds Collide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faelind’s world crashes down around him as Baralin confronts him with one of his worst nightmares, while Lutha finally has answers to the questions of his past.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you had my son?”

It felt like an age before Faelind could do more than just stare at Baralin. _“What?”_

“Why didn’t you tell me that you had my son?”

“I…” Faelind couldn’t remember the last time he had been so lost for words that they failed him entirely. Of all the things he had expected – and he hadn’t known _what_ to expect – this had not been a remote possibility. He shook his head in a daze, mind whirling, so many things that he wanted to say, to ask, getting lost as he tried to sort his thoughts into some semblance of order. “I…do not understand,” he finally managed.

“It was a very simple question and you are a very clever elf,” Baralin replied. “Let me try it another way. Why is my son in your house?”

“He’s not,” Faelind snapped, momentarily regaining his equilibrium. “He is not your son. He is mine.”

“Is he,” Baralin said quietly. “By blood?”

A fist might as well have reached into Faelind’s chest and wrapped around his heart. The whole world spun around him. It was a wonder that the sky itself had not fallen. “Go,” he said, because in that moment that was all he could say. “We are done. Get off my property. I shall order your arrest if you are still here when I come back out.” Faelind turned and started back to the house, but the words that Baralin flung after him made him freeze.

“You can’t hide from this, Faelind. I’m not going anywhere.”

Later, perhaps, Faelind would be horrified at the thought that came into his head. In that moment, it seemed like a very real solution to a very real problem; indeed, the only solution. _Kill him. End this. Kill him and it all goes away._ He turned slowly and almost wondered if Baralin guessed what he was thinking, for the other ellon wore a knowing sort of smile. There were no weapons to hand and Faelind knew that under normal circumstances he couldn’t choke the life out of someone. But these were not normal circumstances. Could he do it to protect Luthavar? For that was what it came down to, was it not? _You have done it before_ , a voice pointed out somewhere deep inside. _Yes. But that was different._

“Tell me that Luthavar is your son by blood,” Baralin said calmly. “Swear on his life.”

Faelind had never wanted to lie as desperately as he did then, but he could only shake his head helplessly. “He is my _son_.”

Relief mingled with understanding as Baralin’s eyes briefly fluttered shut. “We have a habit of starting off on the wrong foot, Faelind. I haven’t come here to cause trouble. That is not my intention.”

“Then why,” Faelind said hollowly. “Why have you come?”

“You remembered well what I told you all those years ago in Harad, that the Greenwood reminds me too much of Doriath. Long had I avoided it before I summoned the courage to come here some weeks back. Looking for my son, yes, always that is behind every step I take. But also I thought to meet you again. We did end up getting along quite well in Harad,” Baralin said, with a small smile.

“But…” Faelind could not keep his mind on anything but the accusation that had turned his world upside down. “Luthavar may not be my son by blood, but that does not make him yours.”

Baralin’s smile faded as he looked deep into Faelind’s eyes, a meeting of sombre blue and devastated green. “The moment I stepped across the borders of this land, I knew that he was here. My son. I felt it. And with every mile that passed beneath my feet I felt that pull getting stronger and stronger until finally, today, I felt that my heart would burst with it. As I stood beneath an old oak tree, the ache of that pull settled. I looked up and there he was. I had found him.”

“You didn’t say anything to him.” Faelind spoke the words with effort, his mouth dry and his heart heavy. “You didn’t tell him anything that might…”

“No,” Baralin promised. “Not when he jumped down from the tree and I looked into eyes that made me think of my wife. Not when he spoke and his voice brought me memories of a niece dead and gone for more than two thousand years. I don’t know what he felt, Faelind. If he felt anything at all. But I did. I felt our bond falling into place after a century apart. Even so I held my tongue and I held my tears. I was so afraid of it all being a dream and so I let Luthavar believe me a simple traveller when all I wanted to do was hold him and never let go. But a part of me still could not believe it. Not fully. Not until just now when you punished him-”

“I didn’t tell you,” Faelind began.

“That you were going to punish him? No,” Baralin agreed. “But I felt a quiver of distress travel from him to me across our bond. I _felt_ it. I could hardly breathe with shock, with joy. Faelind…Luthavar is my son. He is. I have found him.”

Faelind walked without seeing where he was putting his feet until he reached a bench at the edge of the garden. He sank onto it and leaned forward, resting his head in his hands. He felt rather than saw Baralin quietly sit next to him. Everything would change, he realised numbly. It was going to be ruined. Everything that he and Luthavar had built together, the bond that had grown between them until it was as strong as any bond between a father and son who shared blood, and the love that they shared…no, no, the love wouldn’t be ruined, Faelind told himself. He would still love Luthavar. Even if…

“Are you going to take him from me?”

“No.” Baralin put a hand on Faelind’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “I told you that I’m not here to cause trouble. Now that I have found him I would love nothing more than to build a relationship with him even if that is only seeing him monthly or exchanging letters. But that is me being greedy and wanting more of him. I always told myself that it would be enough for me to know that my son was happy and safe, that I would not disrupt his life if he was with good people. And he is. It takes more than creating a child to give one rights to that child. I know that. And it wasn’t me who raised him, who gave him a good life and a happy childhood. That was you, Faelind. I respect that. I respect your right to be his father.”

Faelind laughed low in his throat as he looked up, his hands falling away from his head. There was no humour in the laugh. “What do you think? That he walked right into this life the moment you abandoned him?”

“I know he didn’t,” Baralin said quietly. “I knew that it would take time.”

“It took sixty-eight years,” Faelind replied, his voice as hard as his eyes. “I have had him for less than half his life. The life that he lived before was hell. And you, Baralin, you will _not_ walk away from this thinking that it was good because I tell you now that it was not.” A thought occurred then to Faelind and he stared deep into Baralin’s eyes as they flickered with horror. “You haven’t realised,” Faelind said slowly. “You haven’t made the connection. I told you why I was in Harad thirty-five years ago. I told you what Malik Jasim did to my son. To Luthavar.”

“No,” Baralin breathed. “That cannot be.”

“And that is only the start of it,” Faelind said harshly. “You will listen but you will talk, too. Luthavar grew up believing that his family left him to die on a rubbish heap. You have much to answer for.”

This time it was Baralin’s turn to laugh, but like Faelind’s laughter his was empty and dark. “Luthavar was told right. I left him on a rubbish heap. But not,” Baralin added quietly, as Faelind snarled and started to reach for him, “for the reasons that he likely believes. Everything that I did was for him. I will tell my story. Luthavar’s story. And you can do with it what you will.”

“So tell it,” Faelind said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The unpleasantness of the day came flooding back to Lutha the moment he woke. Groaning softly, he buried his face in the pillows as his tender hindquarters throbbed and burned. “It hurts.” He knew that he wasn’t speaking to an empty room. He could sense a familiar presence sitting at his bedside, strong and steady. “It really hurts.”

“Yes,” Faelind said quietly. “You will feel better soon.”

“Easy for you to say.” Lutha pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked at his father through the strands of hair that fell over his eyes. “Did you sit there all afternoon?”

Faelind shook his head but said nothing.

Sighing and wincing, Lutha carefully manoeuvred himself onto his side. “I’m hungry. I don’t think I had lunch today. Is it too late for me to have lunch? What about Torchanar? Did you tell him where to stay in town?”

“Torchanar is downstairs.”

“Is he? I’m glad of that. I’d like to talk more with him. I thought he was quite interesting,” Lutha remarked. “But I ought to put leggings on before I go downstairs. Best not walk around half-clothed with a strange elf in the house.”

“Luthavar.”

Faelind had leaned forward and put a hand on Lutha’s shoulder before he could climb out of bed, but the tone of his voice would have given Lutha pause anyway. The more Lutha thought about it, the more he realised that something seemed…off with his father. Faelind had not smiled once since Lutha had woken. Nor had he spoken in sentences consisting of more than a few words when he had spoken at all. Lutha drew back and looked warily at him. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. No.” Haunted, pained shadows danced in Faelind’s eyes. “Luthavar, we need to talk.”

“You’re scaring me,” Lutha said softly.

“I know. I am sorry.” Moving from the chair onto the edge of the bed, Faelind tucked a lock of hair behind Lutha’s ear and touched his cheek lightly. “And I am sorry for laying this burden upon you, my little boy, but there are things that you need to know. Things that will be difficult for you to hear. All I ask is that whatever you do hear, whatever you learn today, you remember that I love you. Beyond anything in the world, I love you. I will be here for you. Do you understand that?”

Lutha nodded slowly. “I understand.”

“Good boy,” Faelind said quietly. “Firstly, you must know that Torchanar is not the name of the ellon waiting in our living room. That is an alias. His true name is Baralin Ravondirion.”

“Oh, that’s much nicer than _Torchanar_ ,” Lutha remarked.

No smile graced Faelind’s face. “You asked me if I knew Torchanar and I said that I did not. That was true to some extent. I was unaware that Baralin used that name. But I did know him as Baralin. I do know him. I met him in the City of Harad.”

“You’ve never been to Harad,” Lutha said doubtfully.

“Yes, Luthavar. I have,” Faelind replied. “Do you remember when I was gone from home for a month? It was thirty-five years ago, not long before you and I took that trip to the Gardens of the Entwives and sailed along the River Anduin. It was around the time that you were having your recurring nightmares.”

Lutha took on a closed expression. “I remember. But you didn’t go to Harad. You were just on Elder business.”

“I never told you what business I was on,” Faelind said softly. “I am telling you now. I went to the City of Harad and I killed the man who was haunting your dreams.”

“What…” Eyes wide and lips parting in disbelief, Lutha stared. _“What?”_

Faelind didn’t repeat himself. Lutha didn’t need him to. “It is not something that I am necessarily proud of, Luthavar, but nor is it something that I regret,” Faelind continued. “I delivered justice to a man who had committed many atrocities against you and others. That was all.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Lutha whispered. Before he knew what he was doing, he pushed himself up and flung his arms around Faelind’s neck. “Ada, you shouldn’t have done that! What if you had been caught? What if you had been executed and left me alone? And how have you kept this to yourself all this time without being able to talk about it? I wish you had _told_ me.”

“It was not your burden to bear.” Faelind gave Lutha a light squeeze and a kiss on the brow before drawing back with a deep breath. “As I said, I met Baralin in Harad. You know that both the Malik and his only son and heir died that night. The tale is long, so all I will say for now is that Baralin killed the son. He and I then spent most of that night in one another’s company, talking, drinking good wine in front of a fire. I came to like Baralin but I did not think that I would ever see him again. Until today.”

Lutha shook his head slowly, his eyes darting back and forth as he searched Faelind’s face for all the questions that he wanted answers to. “But I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”

“Oh, my little boy.” Closing his eyes, Faelind appeared to need a moment to steady himself. It only heightened Lutha’s fears. His father wasn’t that sort of elf. His father was _always_ steady, _always_ strong. When Faelind opened his eyes, they were dark with sorrow. “Baralin told me about his son. A son he had lost and was looking for. A son that he named Amdirvel. A son that I…” Faelind caught himself and fell silent. They stood at a precipice where there was still a chance of stepping back from it. But Faelind didn’t. “A son that I named Luthavar.”

Silence.

Lutha stared, not at Faelind but through him as those words bounced around inside his head. He looked away and shook his head slowly. “Mm-mm. No. That’s not…um…may I have lunch now?”

“Luthavar, look at me,” Faelind said gently. When their eyes met, he gave a sad smile that told Lutha he believed what he was saying even though there was no way it could ever be true. “I know that this is difficult to hear. I said that it would be. Baralin strongly believes that you are his son. After everything that he has told me, I do not disbelieve him. He is your father.”

“You are,” Lutha said flatly.

“Yes. Yes, I am. Nothing is going to change that,” Faelind promised. “But Baralin is also your father.”

“The father who didn’t want me? The father who threw me on a rubbish heap and abandoned me to die?” Lutha couldn’t see anything as he got up and started hunting for the leggings that he had discarded earlier, because his vision was blurred with tears. No doubt the pain from his punishment was still there, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything but a hollow ache in his chest. “The father who let the Clan take me into a life of thievery and hurt? That father? Good. Good. That’s so…so good, because why would I not welcome _that_ father into my life with open arms and- _where_ are my leggings?”

“I put them in the basket to be laundered,” Faelind said quietly, as Lutha growled and kicked the chair at his bedside.

Lutha struck tears from his cheeks and pulled open the drawers of his clothing chest. He dragged out a pair of neatly folded charcoal grey leggings, and because he didn’t trust his legs to hold him up, he sat on the floor like a small child to get dressed. His hands shook and the leggings kept snagging as he tried to pull them up. It made him cry in sheer frustration. Faelind knelt at his side and wordlessly helped him, and Lutha realised with a dull pang that he wasn’t crying because he was frustrated. That had simply sent him over the edge. It was for fear and fury that he cried.

Fury won. Lutha pulled away from Faelind the moment he was properly dressed, and he ran from his room and down the long hallway to the top of the split staircase. He could hear Faelind calling him but he ignored the sound of his name. Taking the stairs two at a time, he went straight to the living room where Torchanar – no, Baralin – was waiting. Baralin rose to greet him, and Lutha caught a glimpse of hope and joy and whatever other pleasant feelings Baralin was daring to feel before his expression turned to a resigned sort of understanding. Baralin knew what was coming, and he didn’t defend himself or step back as Lutha flew at him.

Lutha would never remember the names that he called Baralin nor how many times he shoved him or struck his chest. Baralin took it all in silence until Faelind came up behind Lutha and caught him with both arms around his waist. He lifted Lutha off his feet and turned away from Baralin, and as he set Lutha down he held him from behind in a tight hug. “None of that now, my little boy,” he whispered.

“But he…”

“He is not the ellon you believe him to be,” Faelind murmured against Lutha’s ear. “I have heard his tale. So must you before you make your judgement.”

“I don’t want to,” Lutha breathed. “I…I’m afraid.”

Faelind tightened his hold on Lutha and took one deep breath and then another before saying what he had hesitated to admit. “So am I. But we shall face it together.”

Father and son slowly drew apart, and as Lutha turned around Faelind caught him and gently dried the tears that had fallen onto his cheeks. He straightened Lutha’s tunic for him and gave his hair a little tidy, and then he summoned an encouraging smile. Lutha couldn’t return the smile, not even a tiny bit, but it strengthened him somewhat. He stepped past Faelind and came face to face with the ellon who claimed to be his birth father.

“It will not mean much for me to say that I understand you are frightened and angry and confused, but I say it anyway,” Baralin began softly. “I do understand, Luthavar, and you are right to feel all those things. Feel whatever you need to feel. I have told Faelind…” Baralin stopped for a moment. “I have told your father everything. If you are willing to hear me, I will do the same for you. You may ask me any question and I will answer it truthfully to the best of my knowledge and ability. If I cannot answer it, I will tell you why. You have my word that all you hear today will be the truth.”

“Your word means nothing,” Lutha said, his voice husky. “But talk as much as you like.”

Baralin drew a breath but it was Faelind who spoke. “That is not how we do things here. We shall have tea and we shall sit down together like the civilised people that we are.”

Before long they were seated there in the living room with cups of apple and winterberry tea for Faelind and Baralin, and for Lutha a cup of his favourite cocoa even though he had insisted that he didn’t want anything. Now that he had it, he was glad of it, glad of the soothing warmth that spread through his fingers as he wrapped his hands around it and glad of the richly familiar scent that rose with the steam and comforted him. Lutha glanced at Faelind sitting next to him on the settee and then he looked across at Baralin in a chair on the other side of the low table between them.

“I’m ready to listen.”

Baralin inclined his head in grave thanks. He looked momentarily intimidated by the prospect of telling his story for a second time, but with a deep breath, he began. “This story starts with my birth into a noble family of Doriath over four and a half thousand years ago. I was the youngest of four and I had a happy life, though home was stifling and made me restless. You see, Doriath was a traditional kingdom and it placed great value on the concept of an heir and a spare – especially amongst the nobility. But I was a third son. The pressures that my elder brothers endured were not mine to bear. So I travelled. Firstly just around Doriath, but later outside its borders and ever further away from home. Along the way I performed work for Elu Thingol; intelligence gathering, capturing foreign animals for his menagerie, trade with outsiders. It made my adventures more…acceptable, I suppose.”

“Good,” Lutha said blandly. “Can we skip to the part where you abandoned me?”

“Listen, please,” Faelind murmured, lightly touching Lutha’s leg.

“I fear it would make little sense if we skipped that far ahead, so I must ask for your patience. Though travelling was what I loved,” Baralin continued, with a briefly grateful nod to Faelind, “I often returned home to visit my parents, my brothers and sister, and later the nieces and nephews that they gave me. But my home was destroyed in the Second Kinslaying and with it the greater part of my family. My guilt at having been gone from Doriath when the Sons of Fëanor came, at living still when so many of my loved ones were gone, was overwhelming. I stayed close to what small remnants of my family were left. We dwelt in the Havens of Sirion and I was not often far from my young great-nephews, and so when the Third Kinslaying happened, I was there. We survived. So did we also survive the War of Wrath. A new Age began, we settled in Lindon, and in time my nephews encouraged me to travel again for they knew that I was restless once more. So I travelled, this time in the service of a different king.”

“Ereinion Gil-galad,” Faelind said quietly. “You learned about him in your lessons, Luthavar.”

Lutha just gave a small nod. “Yes.”

“On one of my journeys I met an elleth named Anarien. Dark of hair and dark of eye, she was of the Noldor, though her family had not taken part in nor supported the Kinslayings. Indeed her father, Captain Edrahil, was one of those who accompanied Finrod Felagund and Beren Erchamion to retrieve a Silmaril as bride-price for Princess Lúthien of Doriath,” Baralin said. “Those names may be familiar to you if you know of the Quest for the Silmaril.”

“Of course I do!” Lutha snapped, his temper flaring. “I’m not stupid.”

Faelind put his hand on Lutha’s leg again and kept it there this time. “I recall that Luthavar enjoyed learning of that time period in his lessons. Continue, Baralin.”

“Thank you.” Baralin nodded again to Faelind before turning his gaze back to Lutha. “Anarien and I fell in love. We had two daughters, Minien and Tadien, in honour of two of my nieces lost in the Second Kinslaying. Should we have had a third daughter we intended to call her Neldien after my youngest niece. But we…” Words fell away from Baralin as he faltered. For a moment it seemed that he would not continue, but he straightened his shoulders and summoned his strength. “We were captured, Luthavar. Anarien and I, and our daughters, were captured by creatures of the Dark Lord on the borders of Harad on our way to an estate that I held there. We were imprisoned in Mordor and we never saw our daughters again.”

“What happened to them?” Lutha asked quietly.

“Tadien died less than a year after they were taken from us. Minien lasted longer. I can only imagine what happened to them before their deaths,” Baralin replied, his gaze distant as he lost himself in the past. “But it is my belief that Minien was forced to bear children to supplement Sauron’s forces.”

Lutha wondered if he had imagined the room becoming darker as if shadows had slithered in from outside. “Is that really a thing that happens, Ada?” he asked softly.

“Yes, my little boy,” Faelind replied gravely. “It is my understanding that prisoners of the Dark Lord, be they mortal or immortal, serve few purposes beyond hard labour, torture, and breeding. The exception to that would be prisoners of special significance – military officers, spies, leaders and princes and the like – who might possess important information or else be useful as hostages in other ways.”

“That is so. It shames me to admit all that they forced upon Anarien and me,” Baralin said, his voice grimly low. “We refused the…the breeding. For a time. But the punishments that they inflicted on us, the threats that they made against our daughters…” He trailed into silence again and closed his eyes, his face twisted with the pain of his memories. “We defied them as best we could for as long as we could. But in time, we had our first child born in captivity. We called him Berethor. He had my mother’s red hair. We were allowed to keep him for a little while until he was taken.”

“Why?” Lutha breathed in horror.

“So that he could be raised to be loyal to Sauron,” Baralin said quietly. “Anarien and I had another son sixteen years later. We knew that he would not survive long, that he would leave us to be Reborn in the West. Gladhor, we named him; we wished him to laugh every day of his life. He died within a week. I considered him to be the luckiest of all my children. But his birth, and indeed his death, weakened Anarien terribly so that it was another fifty years before our next child came. She was the one we would have called Neldien. Instead we called her Silrien so that she might have some light in her life even if it was only in her name.”

“Was she taken too?” Lutha asked, though he dreaded the answer.

Baralin nodded wordlessly and was quiet for a time before forcing himself to continue. “I nearly lost Anarien. I wished for her to let go so that she would be free of torment, but she held on and survived through her weakness and pain. Many years passed before our next child came, and he did not come alone. Morfindir was born first, as dark haired and dark eyed as Anarien. He was not a healthy baby, but he was as well as could be expected. Anarien lived long enough to deliver the second child. I held them, Anarien and our twin baby boys, until our captors came. They took Morfindir immediately, ripping him from my arms. But the other child they left, because he was still and silent and weak, and I told them that he was dead though I could feel his little heart beating under my hand. My captors were not kind, but they allowed it when I asked to bury my son. They sent me to the rubbish heaps. Their idea of a joke, I suppose. And so I left my last baby on the least foul of those rubbish heaps.”

“Me,” Lutha whispered, numb and empty.

“You,” Baralin agreed soberly. “Nobody came to drag me back to my cell, so I waited until I saw a band of men from the South marching out of Mordor. You gave a tiny cry. From a distance, I watched as the men found you and swaddled you in their cloaks so that nobody would discover you and make them hand you over. They were not good people, Luthavar. They were allies of Sauron. I knew that I was sending you into a bleak life, but it was my deepest wish that your hardship would be so brief that you would not remember it, that the men would sell you to kind people who perhaps could not have a child but were desperate for one to love. That was my hope for you. And whatever happened, I knew that you stood a better chance outside of Mordor than inside it. I had to give you that chance, Luthavar. I had to.”

“Why didn’t you escape with me?” Lutha asked hollowly.

Sighing softly, Baralin shook his head. “I could feel my bonds with Berethor and Silrien. They had grown fainter over the years but they were still there. Faintest of all was my bond with Morfindir. I’d had so little time with him. But even though I could not see my other children, they needed to draw on my strength especially with their mother – your mother – now gone. But don’t ever think that I chose them over you, Luthavar. Had I attempted escape at that time I would have been caught and returned to my captors if I was not killed on sight, and they would have discovered that you lived. I could not let that happen. Instead I let you go. As for those bonds with your brothers and your sister, they failed over time. When the last of them broke, I sought to escape captivity. It took time and failed attempts, but finally I was free. I had been in darkness for so long that the sun hurt my eyes and my skin, and I could only travel by night. I made my way to Harad, to my estate there, where I recovered. As soon as I was well enough, Luthavar, I began searching for you. That was nearly fifty years ago and I never stopped searching for you.”

Lutha had leaned forward with his head in his hands, and as he slowly rocked himself back and forth he could feel Faelind’s hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. A loving family…captivity and torture…brothers and sisters…a mother who had died giving him life, a father who had loved him so much that he had set Lutha free…answers, answers to all the questions that Lutha had grown up wondering about. It was too much and yet it wasn’t enough. He had so many other questions, so much that he was desperate to know. He just couldn’t find the words. His head was a jumble of mismatched thoughts, his heart aching for the past that had been returned to him. Did he really want it?

“Luthavar,” Faelind said gently. “Is there anything that you would like to ask Baralin? Or me?”

“Yes,” Lutha whispered. “Lots of things.”

“Ask what you need to ask,” Faelind encouraged him.

Lutha shook his head mutely and wrapped his arms tightly around his middle. He wanted to double over until he could curl into a ball and shut everything out. He didn’t know where to start. He needed time. Something familiar. Out of nowhere, his world had been turned upside down and flipped about, and normality needed to reign – at least for a time. So Lutha looked up and met Faelind’s eyes, and in the smallest of voices, he said, “May I have my lunch now, please?”


	5. Questions and Answers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questions are asked and answers are given, but as the day draws to a close, Lutha finds himself with yet more questions.

Faelind didn’t challenge Lutha’s request to have lunch even though it was late in the afternoon and dinner was but a few hours away. With the household staff dismissed early for privacy, the two of them sat at the table in the kitchen, Lutha slowly nibbling around the edges of his sandwich while Faelind allowed him to take as much time as he needed. They didn’t talk at all. There was a lot to say and yet nothing to say. Eventually they were joined by Baralin, who hesitated in the doorway until Faelind glanced at Lutha and then gave a wordless nod. Baralin returned the nod in silent gratitude, and so the three of them came to be seated together when talk finally resumed. Unexpectedly, perhaps, it was Lutha who initiated it.

“I like sandwiches,” he ventured, looking at Baralin from under his lashes.

“They’re good,” Baralin agreed. “You can’t go wrong with a sandwich.”

“You can. If the bread is too hard or there isn’t enough filling,” Lutha replied. “Or if there’s too much so it falls apart.”

“Ah. You have me there,” Baralin conceded.

Lutha ducked his head and looked away. It was Faelind who spoke into the silence. “Are you ready to ask your questions, Luthavar? Or would you like more time?”

“I can just talk if you prefer,” Baralin added. “You might find that some of your questions are answered that way.”

The truth was that Lutha hadn’t given much thought at all to his questions while he had been eating lunch. Fixating on the food, keeping his spinning mind away from all that he had learned that day, had felt safer. He found that he didn’t know what to say, and he shifted restlessly as he felt both the older ellyn watching him. Now that the shock had started to wear off and he was more aware of physical things, he could plainly feel once more the lingering pain and discomfort from his punishment of that afternoon. It made him sigh and switch positions, curling one leg beneath him. That was not an acceptable way of sitting when one was at the table, but Lutha reasoned that they were only at the kitchen table and not the more formal dining room table. Besides, Faelind let it pass without comment despite clearly noticing it, so maybe it was all right this time.

“You said that you knew that you would be sending me into a life of hardship but that you hoped it would be brief,” Lutha said finally, looking across the table at Baralin. “Do you know what…” Suddenly, Lutha realised that he didn’t know how to finish that question. There was no polite way of describing the things that he had endured. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to, because it didn’t feel right for those to be the first things that Baralin knew about him.

“I don’t know everything that happened to you, no,” Baralin replied, a pained grimace on his handsome face. “I have heard enough from Faelind to know that those who called themselves your family abused you terribly and put you in situations where others could abuse you. But Faelind and I are both in agreement that it is your story to tell. It will take time before you trust me enough to let me into that part of your life.”

“How does it make you feel?” Lutha asked softly. “To have an idea of what happened to me?”

Baralin breathed out slowly and laid his hands flat on the table to steady them. “It grieves me. Beyond measure, it grieves me. That was never what I wanted for you. It was never what I thought would come to be. Perhaps I was naïve and foolishly hopeful…or just foolish…but I truly believed that you would find your way into a happy life. You have, clearly. But I am desperately sad and sorry that you had to suffer so much before.”

It occurred to Lutha that the next question that sprang into his mind wasn’t important, for it dealt with what may have been and not what was, but he felt curious enough to ask it. “Would you have done things differently if you had known what would happen to me?”

“I don’t know,” Baralin admitted reluctantly. “My captors would have taken you had I told them that you were alive but weak. You would have died in my arms had I simply remained sitting there with you instead of asking to bury you. I beg Faelind’s forgiveness for saying this, but when I think of what you endured, just another form of torture and captivity when I could have let you go to be Reborn in the West and one day live in peace with my family there, it is difficult for me to believe that death would not have been kinder. And yet…” Baralin’s indigo gaze moved from Lutha to Faelind and then back again. “Look at the love that you have here, Luthavar. The life that you have. I can’t be sorry for that. So, while I have said a lot in giving this answer, I must say again that I don’t know.”

“Thank you. For being honest.” Lutha tried to untangle how he felt about that. He would give anything not to have suffered the torment of his childhood. That he could have grown up amongst his own people, raised by a loving family, made his heart ache for the terrified little boy that he had been. For that little boy to have endured beating upon beating, rape upon rape, imprisonment and starvation and the threat of execution, when there had been another life waiting for him across the Sea and far to the West…Lutha had to look down to hide his tears. _And yet._ He wondered if the same realisation had occurred to Faelind; that, without those things, the two of them would have never been brought together. The far off look in Faelind’s eyes made Lutha think that his father was also struggling with that dilemma.

“You said that you called me Amdirvel,” he recalled, wrenching his mind away from such unsettling thoughts.

“Amdirvel,” Baralin agreed with a wistful smile. “ _Strong Hope._ I named you for the strength that I wished for you and the hope that I had for you.”

“Do I have to change my name?”

“No,” Baralin replied without hesitation. “You are Luthavar. That is your name.”

Faelind didn’t break his silence, but Lutha saw in his peripheral vision that his father’s chest rose and fell in a barely audible breath of relief. It was a brief but startling moment of clarity for Lutha, for he hadn’t understood that this was as difficult for Faelind as it was for him. Slipping his hand under the table, he entwined his fingers with Faelind’s and looked across at Baralin. “What’s going to happen?” He felt Faelind give his hand a gentle squeeze.

“Nothing that you do not want,” Baralin said. “I will give you as much space and time as you need, and you have my word that I will respect whatever part you want me to play in your life whether that is big or small. You should know that it is also your right to decide that you want nothing to do with me, though I will not leave unless I am told to.”

Lutha looked slowly between the two ellyn, between his father and…his father, he thought, lowering his eyes to stare at the tabletop. The father who had made him and the father who had chosen him, though both had saved him. His anger at Baralin had faded, but it had been replaced by so many other strange thoughts and feelings for Lutha to explore when he had space in his head for them; that he had older brothers and sisters, that he was a twin, that he finally knew his mother’s name, even that he was not the common elf he had always supposed himself to be but descended from nobility! It was a lot for one boy to take in. Almost too much.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Lutha said finally. “I just…I don’t want to upset anyone.”

The words prompted a slow and thoughtful nod from Baralin, but they stirred Faelind from his thoughts and it was he who spoke. “I understand what you are not saying, my little boy,” he said softly. “You will not upset me by choosing to have a relationship with Baralin. You ought to have an opportunity to get to know him. He is your father, after all.”

“So are you,” Lutha said, unable to conceal his misery. “I don’t want that to change.”

“It could never change,” Faelind promised. “I am still your father and I will always be your father.”

“I vow that it is not and will never be my intention to come between the two of you,” Baralin added. “I could not get in the way of your close bond even if I wanted to. Anyone would be foolish to try.”

“So I could get to know Baralin and it wouldn’t hurt your feelings?” Lutha asked slowly, looking towards Faelind.

“I am willing to work with Baralin to help you build whatever relationship with him you desire,” Faelind replied. “We both will respect your wishes, Luthavar.”

That hadn’t really answered the question that Lutha had asked and he wondered if Faelind had deliberately phrased it that way to avoid having to admit the truth. It was all so complicated, Lutha thought unhappily, slowly drawing a pattern on the tabletop with the tip of his finger. He tried to imagine how he would feel if a long lost son or daughter of Faelind’s magically came into existence and he had to watch his father getting to know another child. Lutha knew himself well enough to know that he would be jealous. It would hurt and he would hate it. Lutha was loyal to Faelind, always, and he couldn’t bear to do anything that might make his beloved father uncomfortable. And yet, he couldn’t turn Baralin away. _Ada hasn’t told you to_ , he reminded himself. _Maybe you’re just making problems where there aren’t any._

The distant sound of a door closing somewhere towards the front of the grand house made all three ellyn look up. “Daernana Thureneth,” Lutha realised.

“Yes,” Faelind agreed with a sigh. “I had quite forgotten that she was to join us for dinner tonight.”

Thureneth appeared in the doorway with a bottle of wine in one hand and a basket letting out the scent of freshly baked buns in the other. Shaking raindrops from her plaited hair, she greeted Faelind and Lutha gaily as she swept in, but as her gaze landed on Baralin she froze so abruptly that the emerald green skirt of her gown swished around her feet. The wine bottle she just about held onto, but the basket slipped from her arm and dropped to the floor, buns spilling out as the cloth covering fell off. Lutha stayed where he was and just stared, but Faelind and Baralin rose as one. Baralin was closest to the door and reached Thureneth first.

Stopping a few feet away from Thureneth, Baralin stared at her and slowly reached out to take the bottle before it could tumble through her fingers. “Thureneth…”

Tears shone in her eyes as she raised both trembling hands to her mouth. “I don’t understand,” she breathed. “Why…how…”

And then, to Lutha’s great astonishment, Baralin put the bottle of wine down so that he could pull Thureneth into his arms. Lutha was so offended that Baralin would just grab her like that that his mouth fell open, but as he watched he saw Thureneth put her arms around Baralin in return and clutch the back of his tunic as she wept against his shoulder. Baralin was stroking her hair, and murmuring words in her ear that Lutha couldn’t hear. 

“They know one another,” Faelind said quietly, as Lutha looked to him for an explanation. “I believe that they were friends a long time ago.”

“Friends?” Baralin turned around with a joyful laugh. “We weren’t friends, Faelind. We…well, I suppose we were friends in a way. But before that, Thureneth was my niece. She _is_ my niece. And close to five hundred years have passed since last I saw her.”

“Your niece?” Faelind repeated incredulously.

“It is true, ion nín,” Thureneth said, echoing Baralin’s happy laughter as she wiped tears from her cheeks with a gloved hand. “Baralin is my uncle. Your great-uncle.”

Standing as still as a statue, stunned into silence, Faelind’s expression was suddenly inscrutable and like nothing Lutha had ever seen before. Not even in the early days when they had been strangers to each other. “I don’t understand,” the elfling ventured softly.

“I told you that I was one of four children, Luthavar,” Baralin said. “My parents were Lord Ravondir and Lady Halloth of Doriath. They had Arvellon, Ramirith, Siliveth, and me. Arvellon had three sons and Siliveth three daughters. I had you. And Ramirith, long before the rest of us became parents, he had Thureneth.”

“What are you saying?” There hadn’t even been a chance for Lutha to speak, for Thureneth had broken in. Gripping Baralin’s arm, she gave him a little shake and looked urgently at him. “What do you mean?”

“Luthavar is my son, Thureneth,” Baralin replied gently. “I am his birth father. I lost him when he was newly born and I have been searching for him for years. Today I found him…and you, and Faelind, a nephew I never even knew I had.”

“Wait,” Lutha whispered, as Thureneth sank disbelievingly into a chair. “If I’m your son, and Daernana and Ada are your niece and great-nephew then…then that makes them my cousins. Doesn’t it?”

“We share blood,” Thureneth agreed faintly. “Faelind…you always said that Lutha looks like you, that you feel a bond connecting you together. This is why. He is your cousin.”

The words stirred Faelind from his stillness. He looked slowly towards Thureneth, but his glazed expression suggested that he wasn’t truly seeing her but rather looking straight through her. “Excuse me,” he said distantly, and without another word he left the kitchen.

“Why did he go?” Lutha asked into the silence that his father had left behind.

Thureneth and Baralin exchanged a long look with each other that made Lutha wonder if they could see something that he couldn’t. “Perhaps he needs some time to process his thoughts,” Thureneth replied after a moment. “This is so much to take in. All of it. I need time myself, I…Baralin, I have to ask this, are you sure that you are Lutha’s father? Absolutely sure?”

“Does he not look so much like Anarien?” Baralin replied softly. 

“Yes,” Thureneth whispered, and fresh tears shimmered in her eyes as she looked at Lutha as if seeing him for the first time. “Yes. I see it now. But I don’t understand. How can this be? Where have you been all these years? How did you come to lose Lutha? And where is Anarien? And the girls?”

“We both have many questions,” Baralin said. “I would like to know why you never told me that you had a son. That would have given me great joy and I would have dearly loved to meet him.”

Lutha got up from the table and quietly slipped away, stepping over the dropped basket and the spilled buns that nobody had thought to pick up yet. He was curious about the answers to the questions that Baralin had for Thureneth, but he didn’t need to hear Baralin’s story again. Not that day, anyway. Instead he walked slowly through the house, listening out and looking everywhere for Faelind until finally he found him in Lutha’s own bedroom. Faelind was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands and his eyes closed. Nestled between his arms and his chest was one of Lutha’s pillows. The sight of it made Lutha freeze in the doorway. He felt awfully as though he had walked in on something intimate and vulnerable that should have been kept private.

“I thought you might be in the study,” he ventured finally.

Faelind lifted his head. No tears were there on his cheeks, and his eyes were not red rimmed as if he had been crying, but their usually bright green depths were dark with a pain that Lutha wished he could understand. Breathing out slowly, Faelind returned the pillow to its proper place and stood up. “I am well,” he said briefly, smoothing his hand down the front of his tunic. “Why did you come upstairs, Luthavar? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, fine,” Lutha replied. “Baralin is going to tell Daernana Thureneth his story and I didn’t need to hear it again. I just thought that I would check on you.”

“Thank you, but it is as I told you. I am well,” Faelind said.

“You just…you walked out,” Lutha said slowly. “When you found out that we’re cousins you just left. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Do you think that it is?”

Putting his arms around himself, Lutha stared at the floor. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had done something wrong or misspoken somewhere, but he couldn’t imagine how. “I…I don’t think that it’s a bad thing. Sharing blood, I mean. Being cousins.”

“Well, then.” Faelind smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. It reminded Lutha of the cold pretend smiles that Faelind had worn in the earliest days of their knowing each other, when they hadn’t been father and son but just two strangers forced together against their will. “Let us return downstairs, _cousin_.”

Lutha didn’t move as Faelind stepped to the door. “It feels as though you said that to be mean to me,” he said quietly.

That made Faelind stop, though he didn’t turn around. “That was not my intention, Luthavar,” he replied, just as quietly. “It was a half-hearted attempt at humour.”

“I don’t want you to call me _cousin_ ,” Lutha whispered. “I don’t want us to be cousins. I want us to be what we’ve always been.”

“Yes,” Faelind agreed softly.

Lutha drew in a breath of understanding. “That’s why you left. Why you came here to be sad. Because you think that cousins isn’t good enough and that it somehow makes us…I don’t know, less, that people will say, _well, you’re just Lutha’s cousin but Baralin is his father._ But what happened to everything that you said about still being my father? Unless you were lying about that.”

“You know I was not,” Faelind snapped.

“Then prove it!” When his father didn’t turn to face his challenge, Lutha added under his breath, “Or maybe I’ll just go with Baralin.”

The taunt worked. Faelind stiffened. “Maybe you will.”

“I know what you’re doing, you know,” Lutha added, more clearly.

Finally, Faelind turned to look at him. “And what am I doing?”

“The same thing you did on the night you said that you would adopt me. Do you remember? Nithaniel came here and she said that she had found a family for me. I still remember everything about them. The teacher, the healer, and their grown up children,” Lutha recalled, watching his father carefully. “You walked away then, too. I followed you, just like I followed you today, and you were so cold, so detached. Formal, as if we were compete strangers. You thought that you were about to lose me, so you tried pushing me away first so that it would hurt less. That’s what you’re doing now. You’re trying to protect your heart but all you’re doing is hurting mine. Because how could you _ever_ think that I would walk away from you? I love you, Ada.”

Faelind stared at Lutha, and as he sighed heavily into the silence that followed it was like something went out of him. “Come,” he said softly, opening his arms. As Lutha went willingly into them, Faelind held him close and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “I am so sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry for hurting you. That is the last thing I would ever want. I love you more than anything in the world, and I find myself wondering when you became so wise and perceptive, because everything that you said was true. Being cousins…yes, it sounds less.”

“It doesn’t change the way that I see you or what I feel about you,” Lutha whispered back. “Does it really change me in your eyes?”

“No, Luthavar, it doesn’t,” Faelind said quietly, holding Lutha tighter against his chest. “You are still my son. Still so much more than just a cousin. And it seems you are far more knowledgeable about certain aspects of my character than I am. Forgive me, my little boy.”

“I do.”

Faelind drew back and kissed Lutha’s brow, and as they returned downstairs they heard the low sounds of Baralin talking and occasionally a soft gasp from Thureneth. Lutha held back. There was no need for Faelind to ask the question. He understood. Putting his hand on Lutha’s shoulder, he guided him away from the story being told in the kitchen and into the living room instead. Together they sat on the settee, Lutha curled against Faelind’s side with his father’s arm wrapped reassuringly around him.

“Ada,” Lutha said eventually. “Did you really kill the Malik of Harad?”

“I really did,” Faelind confirmed.

“Was it really just for me?”

“It was not a decision that I took lightly, but it was something that I felt was necessary to deliver justice to one who had committed terrible crimes,” Faelind replied. “It was very much a once in a lifetime event and not one that will happen again.”

“Never say never,” Lutha suggested.

Faelind winced. “That is not the context in which that phrase is best used.”

Laughing under his breath, Lutha rested his head against Faelind’s shoulder. Silence fell, but this time it was comfortable and easy. The only thing missing was the crackle of flames in the fireplace. Lutha was reluctant to disturb the peace, so he waited until the chill of the winter’s evening touched him and sent a shiver through his body. Pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them, he watched as Faelind rose to light the fire. It wasn’t long before warmth began seeping through the room and with it the sweet fragrance of burning cherry wood.

“I might not even like Baralin,” Lutha ventured after a while, gazing into the flickering flames. “When I get to know him, I mean.”

“You will,” Faelind murmured. “I do not dislike him myself.”

“A glowing report.” Neither Faelind nor Lutha had heard Baralin approaching, and they both sat up straight with matching expressions of wariness as he stepped into the room with a rueful smile. “Thureneth and I have finished speaking,” he added. “She now knows everything that the two of you know.”

“And have you had your questions answered?” Faelind queried neutrally.

“Some,” Baralin allowed. He hesitated, his gaze resting on Lutha, and he drew a deep breath before speaking. “I know that I have brought a great deal of turmoil into your lives. You both have a lot to think about, so I am going to leave now and take a room in town – Thureneth suggested The Great Oak as a nice place to stay – and that is where you will be able to find me. I will wait to hear from you.”

“You will be there?” Lutha asked. “You’re not leaving the forest?”

“I will be there,” Baralin promised. “Write to me when you are ready, or visit me, or invite me to dinner. Whatever you like. Or just stand outside and wave to me through the window if that is all you feel comfortable doing.”

There was no laughter from Faelind, but Lutha couldn’t help a small smile. “All right.”

Baralin returned the smile, and his eyes lingered on Lutha as if he didn’t want to – or just couldn’t – look away. Finally, he gave himself a little shake and started to turn, but then he hesitated and glanced back. “Faelind. When the sun rose this morning I wondered if today might be the day that I found my son. Not for a moment did I dream that I might also find a nephew I had never even known of. Now that I have, I could not be happier. We already know one another a little, you and I, and as an uncle…well, I am proud of my nephew. I wish you to know that.”

For a moment Lutha thought that Faelind wouldn’t say anything at all, but he managed a brief nod and quietly thanked Baralin. He looked away then, before Baralin could reply, so Baralin said nothing more and looked at Lutha again as though committing everything about him to memory. Then, not without great reluctance, he gave Lutha a final smile before quietly slipping away. Lutha just smiled to himself and curled closer against Faelind’s side. He felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with the fire casting its orange and red glow around the room.

By the time Thureneth came to join them, Lutha was lying down with his head in his father’s lap and a cushion hugged to his chest. Faelind had been silently stroking his hair, so gently and so soothingly that it had almost sent Lutha to sleep. Almost, but not quite. So when Thureneth softly asked if he was sleeping, and Faelind replied in a low voice that he was, Lutha didn’t contradict them. He kept his eyes closed and his breathing deep and even.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“Don’t lie to me, Faelind.”

“It seems we excel at that.”

Lutha heard a sigh and then the sound of Thureneth’s skirt rustling as she sat and crossed one leg over the other. “I know that you must have questions.”

“But not the fortitude to ask them tonight.” Faelind’s hand stilled on Lutha’s hair. “Though I will say this. I never blamed you for keeping me a secret from your family. You said that they would have judged you for having a child so young, for marrying outside of the Doriathrin nobility and leading a double life. I understand the choices that you made. But Doriath has been gone a long time and your family with it. You could have told me who they were. You could have told Baralin of my existence.”

“You never asked about them,” Thureneth replied, her voice pained. “I thought you were not interested.”

“I never asked because my father never allowed it,” Faelind retorted. “And after he left you had no interest in exploring the past. You said that with him gone it was a new start for us, that we should only look forward. That is what happened. But what I understand even less is why you would never tell Baralin of me. Unless you were ashamed – of the life that you had here, or of me.”

“No!” Lutha thought that Faelind had looked sharply at Thureneth, because she sighed and said again, more quietly, “No. Never that. I have made mistakes, Faelind. And yes, some of those mistakes relate to you. If I could do it again I would be a _mother_ to you, not a friend or some blend of an older sister and young aunt. I would whisk you away from your unfeeling brute of a father, back to Doriath, or maybe just to a lovely little cottage where I’d go it alone and all we would need is one another. Yes, I made mistakes. I confess to them. But you, my son…you were the one thing I loved more than myself. The one thing I was proud of.”

“Not enough to tell Baralin,” Faelind murmured.

“It was nothing to do with that,” Thureneth said miserably. “Baralin wouldn’t have judged me as the rest of the family would, but before Doriath fell I feared it was too great a secret for him to keep and unfair to ask it of him. After Doriath fell, your father was still here, and I was afraid of how he would react should Baralin come here. Because Baralin would have done that. He would have wanted to know you. And then years later, when your father was gone, I thought that Baralin would feel upset or betrayed to know that I had kept you from him. Time went on and it seemed easier to keep everything as it was because I had spent so long keeping the different parts of my life separate. Now here we are, in a situation that I could never have predicted.”

His face half hidden by the cushion that he was hugging, Lutha lay still and silent as Faelind slowly began stroking his hair again. “Don’t you think,” he heard his father say quietly, “that growing up it would have been advantageous for me to have in my life an older male relative who was not my father? Or that when Midhaearien died I would not have benefited from the comfort and counsel of someone like Baralin instead of the cold distance that my father kept between us?”

“Yes and yes, but I can’t change the past,” Thureneth whispered. “You can have that relationship with Baralin now.”

Faelind laughed flatly. “I needed it when I was a boy, not now. And if Baralin had not turned up today you would have kept this to yourself for another thousand years. It hasn’t escaped my realisation, you know.”

“What?” Thureneth asked guardedly.

Lutha held his breath in anticipation only to remember that he was meant to be doing a convincing job of feigning sleep. He breathed out slowly and stirred a little, settling down again under the gentle touch of Faelind’s hand on his head. “All those years ago in Harad, I learned that Baralin has nephews in Lindon. Oropher Celepharnion and his brother,” Faelind said. “Given the role that they – specifically Oropher – will one day play in this land, don’t you think that it would have been useful for me to know that they are our cousins?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Thureneth sighed. “The last time I saw them Oropher was a little boy clutching his mother’s skirt and Vehiron was newly born. I could pass them on the street now and we would not recognise one another. You may do with this knowledge what you will, Faelind, but for my part I was never inclined to get to know them. They were the sons of a younger cousin I barely knew. Inserting myself into their life just seemed…it made no sense to me. Aside from that, I feared how interference from me might affect the Prophecy.”

_Prophecy?_ Lutha was glad of the cushion hiding his face, because he felt his eyes open and widen in surprise. He lay still as Faelind replied dismissively, “The Prophecy of the Golden King refers not to Oropher but to his son.”

“Yes, his son!” Thureneth agreed in frustration. “I know that. I was afraid of diverting Oropher onto the wrong path or…or something. Making him come here sooner than he should have. I don’t know. Prophecies are not my gift. Nor are they yours.” There was a faint rustling of fabric, and when Thureneth spoke next her voice came from the other side of the room by the door. “Cast your judgement as you will, Faelind. That _is_ your province. But know that I have never done the wrong thing knowing that it was the wrong thing. Everything that I have ever done has been for the right reasons, because it _seemed_ right. Everything.”

Lutha barely remembered to breathe. He wanted to jump to his feet and shout at Faelind not to let Thureneth walk away, to grab hold of Thureneth and remind her how stubborn Faelind was and that he would come round in the end. But he didn’t have to. He felt rather than heard his father sigh. “I know you have,” Faelind said. “And I cast no judgement. I cannot say what I would have done in your position.”

“Thank you,” Thureneth said quietly.

“But we shall have to tell everyone else,” Faelind added. “Unless our colleagues already know this.”

“Rethedir knows,” Thureneth replied. “Nobody else.”

Faelind nodded briefly. “Why does Rethedir know? He’s not another long lost cousin, is he.”

From the far side of the room came a weak laugh, and Lutha wished he could have seen whatever look on Thureneth’s face had caused Faelind to breathe in sharply. He supposed that Thureneth regretted it, for she was quick to respond. “No! No, he is not another long lost cousin of ours. I promise you that. Though, Doriathrin noble families were complex and intertwined, so maybe…but no, not as far as I know. Rethedir is not our family. But he is Oropher’s. And that is his story to tell.”

“A preview would be appreciated,” Faelind said flatly.

“Very well,” Thureneth conceded. “His name was Lord Galadhon. Long ago.”

Lutha heard the whisper of long hair brushing brocade as Faelind nodded silently, and there followed a few murmured words of farewell before Thureneth quietly left. Faelind stayed where he was, his hand lying still where he had been stroking Lutha’s hair. Lutha didn’t dare glance up, but he could picture the look that his father would be wearing. It would be the far off and distant look that he wore when he was thinking deeply, his piercing eyes softer than normal and his head at a slight angle. Lutha didn’t blame Faelind for being lost in thought. He was, too. The Prophecy of the Golden King. Lord Galadhon of Doriath.

What did it all mean? 


	6. Lords of a Lost Land

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning comes and with it the memories of the day before. Lutha seeks out those who can help him, and finds his courage.

The next morning, Lutha could be found lingering in the kitchen doorway while Mistress Marin the cook muttered under her breath about how it wasn’t right or healthy for the master of the house to stay up until sunrise in the very same clothes he had worn the day before, and how she would have to make him a filling breakfast and brew a tea full of good things to be sure that he didn’t take ill. Lutha hadn’t slept well the night before, and it worried him that Faelind hadn’t even gone to bed, but still he pressed his fingers to his mouth to stifle the laughter that wanted to escape at the thought of how well his father would take their cook’s complaints.

Mistress Marin was originally from a small village on the banks of the River Anduin. Thureneth had met her some years ago whilst on Elder business, and taken pity on her, for Marin had been dismissed from her position after repeatedly burning her former master’s supper. It was to Faelind’s house that Thureneth had brought Marin, because as luck would have it, his cook had just handed in her notice. Privately, Lutha hadn’t thought that being dismissed for burning food was a good recommendation for a cook, and neither had Faelind, but he had just rolled his eyes and said, “Fine, if I must,” when Thureneth had begged him to give Marin a chance. Marin really hadn’t been very good. But she had improved. Even if it had been necessary for the outgoing cook to spend her entire notice period teaching Marin from scratch.

Another thing that Lutha kept to himself was that he actually quite liked having a human around. Marin reminded him a little bit of Mama Bera, the woman who had raised him for the first twenty-three years of his life. Lutha understood, now, that Mama Bera had played a part in the life that he had been forced into, that she had not done enough to save him from it, but she was still the only mother he had ever known. He still loved her. A little bit, anyway. He hadn’t been able to make that love vanish like a candle flame being blown out. Marin wore her greying hair in a bun like Mama Bera, and she was short and stocky like Mama Bera, and she even smelled a bit like her too, a pleasing concoction of cocoa and pastry. Lutha liked that. He liked playing tricks on Marin, too.

“Don’t you know that it is rude to talk about your lord and master behind his back,” he said, in his best approximation of Faelind’s silky smooth voice.

Marin jumped and spun around, one hand going to her mouth and the other flying into the air with her wooden spoon held aloft as if she was a warrior brandishing a sword. “Lutha!” she chided him.

“Sorry,” he replied with a laugh.

“You’re not,” Marin grumbled under her breath, shaking her wooden spoon at him before turning back to the porridge that she had been stirring.

Lutha drifted around the kitchen and examined the goods on offer. Aside from the creamy porridge on the stove there was freshly baked bread waiting to be toasted, along with a selection of jams and marmalades, and dishes of berries to decorate the porridge. A plate of pastries stood ready to be taken to the table. Lutha reached for one, but Marin whacked the back of his hand with a second spoon that had been lurking in the pocket of her apron. On the other side of the kitchen, the two young ellith who had been employed as her assistants exchanged glances and suppressed giggles.

“Those aren’t for you.”

“You’re making breakfast for me,” Lutha complained. “Who else are they for?”

“Yes, but they’re for…”

“Future me,” Lutha supplied. “What about present me?”

“Present you can set the table for future you to have breakfast,” Mari replied firmly.

Lutha dutifully did just that, but he set the dining room table rather than the kitchen table. Sometimes Marin made herself scarce and ushered her assistants outside to gather herbs or flowers when Faelind and Lutha took their meals in the kitchen, but sometimes she didn’t, and Lutha suspected that his father would not care to be bothered by household staff bustling around this morning. Marin, for all her newly developed skills in the kitchen, was not good at reading people. And Faelind, Lutha thought ruefully, could be difficult to read even by those who knew him best.

As if thought had summoned him, Faelind strode into the dining room and gave Lutha a paternal kiss in greeting before seating himself at the head of the long table reserved usually for the entertaining of guests. Lutha didn’t doubt that Faelind had spent the night awake, but as usual he looked the very picture of elegance in black brocade accented with silver, his hair smoothly braided out of his face. Father and son exchanged wordless glances with one another, though neither of them said a thing about the events of the previous day. It was not the right time with their cook looking disapprovingly at them from under her lashes as she carried in the pot of porridge.

“Good morning, Marin,” Faelind said neutrally.

“My lord,” she replied stiffly.

“She’s cross with you because she thinks that you’ll get sick if you stay up all night,” Lutha explained. “Marin, you do know by now that our people can’t get sick, don’t you?”

“Generally speaking,” Faelind clarified pointedly.

“Yes, generally speaking. Youthful creatures like me can get sick, but ancient beings like Ada are quite safe from such horrors as the common cold,” Lutha said, with a sweet smile for both his father and the cook.

Faelind ignored him. Marin just sniffed and brushed off Faelind’s offer of assistance as she heaved the pot of porridge onto the table next to the dishes of honey, blueberries, and nutmeg that her assistants had set out. After giving the table a final critical glance, she nodded to herself and stalked off, wiping her hands on her apron and muttering to herself about hard-headed males who thought that they knew better than anyone else. Lutha pressed his lips together and looked at Faelind with raised eyebrows. Faelind responded with a glower that said he was not in the mood.

“So,” Lutha said, moving on hastily, “are you going to the not-palace today?”

“Yes. I have work that needs doing,” Faelind replied briefly. “And I must meet with Elder Rethedir this afternoon.”

_Elder Rethedir? Or Elder Galadhon?_ Lutha drizzled honey onto his porridge and decided against asking the many questions currently bouncing around his head. He could hardly admit that he had lain awake the previous night eavesdropping on the entire conversation between Faelind and Thureneth. Instead, he said, “I was thinking that I might visit my friends this afternoon. Is that all right?”

“By all means,” Faelind said, though Lutha noticed that he had hesitated.

“I’m not planning to sneak off and see Baralin,” Lutha clarified.

Faelind summoned a smile. “Of course not. See your friends, Luthavar. It is well.”

“I was also thinking that I’d like to tell them about everything that happened yesterday,” Lutha added. 

“Yes, I think you ought to do that,” Faelind agreed thoughtfully. “It is important for you to speak with people removed from the situation. Tell them about Baralin.”

“But maybe I shouldn’t tell them about Harad,” Lutha suggested.

That prompted a soft chuckle from Faelind. “No. Maybe not Harad.”

Lutha should have spent most of that day studying with Thureneth, but shortly after breakfast word came from her that Lutha could refresh himself on their most recent lessons at home and that she would see him the following day. Though nobody voiced the thought, Lutha wondered if Faelind was thinking the same as him, that Thureneth was probably going to visit Baralin. In truth, Lutha couldn’t help a nagging sense of curiosity that gnawed at his stomach. There was a part of him that did want to see Baralin. Not to ask questions, for many of those had been answered already, but just to sit and talk and discover what the father who had created him was really like. But he kept himself distracted at home by helping Marin to make a pie for dinner that night, studying his Dwarven customs and greetings for Thureneth, and napping after lunch. Baralin, and everything else that Lutha had heard and discovered, was the last thing on his mind when he fell asleep and the first thing that he thought of when he woke an hour later.

Finally, just before three o’clock, Lutha made his way to Nestorion’s house. The warm smile waiting for him at the front door was worlds apart from the stern reception that he had received the day before when he and Galad had returned from their misadventure. Nestorion, Lutha had found over the years, was one of those elves who was extraordinarily kind about never holding a grudge. “Hello, Lutha,” the master healer himself said. “I suppose you’re here to see Galad?”

“Well, you’re nice to visit too, but yes,” Lutha replied. “Has he finished work? We need to go and visit Alphros.”

“I gave him today off work. But Lutha,” Nestorion said, firmly though not unkindly, “I’m afraid that you’ll have to come in if you want to see Galad. He is under confinement for the rest of the week.”

“Because of yesterday?”

“Because of yesterday.”

Lutha frowned. “My father hasn’t confined me.”

“And that is Faelind’s choice,” Nestorion replied calmly. “I made the choice to confine Galad.”

“But it’s important,” Lutha said stubbornly. “I need to see Galad _and_ Alphros, the two of them together, and Alphros hurt his ankle which you can’t have forgotten about because it only happened yesterday and _you_ were the one who fixed it for him. So can I have Galad now, please, so that we can go and see Alphros?”

Folding his arms over his chest, Nestorion fixed Lutha with a deep stare. “What is so important that you would keep challenging me, elfling?”

“I found my father,” Lutha said abruptly. “Or he found me.”

“Excuse me?”

“My father found me,” Lutha repeated. “My…blood father? Is that right? I don’t think it’s right, it sounds like he’s made of blood and that would be horrific. My birth…no, that’s not right either. I think birth mother is right but birth father not so much. What about-”

“Lutha.” Nestorion had unfolded his arms, and now he put his hands on Lutha’s shoulders and leaned down slightly to search his face. “Are you saying that your biological father has found you?”

In truth, Lutha hadn’t intended to tell anyone but Alphros and Galad. But Faelind had approved of him telling his friends, after all, and he counted Nestorion as a friend – just one that was much older. “Biological father,” he agreed readily. “That’s what I meant.”

“But how did…” Nestorion shook his head, shaking away his questions, and looked intently at Lutha. “Are you all right? Would you like to talk about it?”

“Yes, and that’s why I need Galad,” Lutha said patiently. “I’ll talk to you about it another time, Nestorion. I promise.”

Breathing out slowly, the master healer nodded and gave Lutha’s shoulders a squeeze. “Of course. I’ll get Galad for you. And Lutha, if there’s anything that you need, anything at all…”

“I know,” Lutha replied softly.

While Nestorion disappeared to find Galad, Lutha lingered outside. A pretty wall of slate grey stone ran around the outskirts of Nestorion’s property, and Lutha leaned back against it to watch a rabbit grazing amongst a patch of yellow and orange nasturtiums on the other side of the garden. The rabbit glanced back at him, bright black eyes darting here and there, and ears twitching with every stray breeze that made the flowers rustle and the trees softly sing. Lutha was relieved when Galad finally emerged from the house; watching rabbits was only entertaining for a finite amount of time.

“What did you do to get me released from confinement?” Galad asked suspiciously, swinging his cloak around his shoulders.

“Why would you think that I needed to do anything but be my usual charming self?” Lutha replied.

Galad just snorted disbelievingly at that and reached one hand back to pull his braids out from the collar of his cloak. As they left through the gate and headed towards the path that would take them to Feredir’s house, Galad gave Lutha a sideways glance. “About yesterday…”

“I know what you’re going to say and you don’t have to,” Lutha cut in. “You didn’t make me go with you. I made that choice myself.”

“Yes, but just let me say it even if you think you know what I’m going to say,” Galad huffed. He pressed on without stopping for breath or giving Lutha a chance to interject. “I feel terrible that I put you in that position. Partly because I know that Elder Faelind must have been very hard on you, and I hate to think of you being in so much trouble just for me. But mostly I feel terrible because it was a dangerous situation. I knew that but I let you come with me even so. I was thinking of myself and I wasn’t being a good friend in that moment, and I do try to be a good friend and to not be selfish. Yesterday was…”

“Yesterday was the end of you being chased by your family. It was a day that had been a long time coming,” Lutha said. “I’ve never known you to be selfish, Galad. And if you were…well, you earned the right to think of yourself for a moment. If my forgiveness means a lot to you then you have it, but I haven’t once been upset with you, and neither has my father. Besides, I’m sure that Nestorion was just as hard on you as my father was on me, and that confinement isn’t your only punishment.”

Galad didn’t acknowledge that but he didn’t need to; his poorly concealed grimace spoke for him. “The other thing that I wanted to say is that while I don’t consider myself to have behaved like a good friend yesterday, you did,” he went on. “What you did for me, the things that you said…”

“It was nothing,” Lutha protested, even as Galad’s words flooded him with warmth. “Any good friend would have.”

“Yes, but it was you,” Galad said. “You stood up for me in a way that nobody ever has before.”

“Because you never had anybody to stand up for you before,” Lutha replied.

“Still,” Galad said softly. “I won’t ever forget it. Thank you.”

Lutha looked across at his friend and smiled. He didn’t need to say anything. Not about that, anyway. “How are you feeling? You know…inside.”

“It’s a lot to think about,” Galad sighed. “The things that Breigon said…well, Master Nestorion is going to help me address them. But it’s a painful thing, Lutha, to know that you’re at least partly responsible for…” He trailed off and looked away with a shake of his head.

_At least partly responsible for your mother’s death_ , Lutha supposed Galad had been about to say. It hadn’t escaped his notice that dead mothers were something that he and Galad now had in common. That was one of the things that had kept him awake the night before, thoughts of his mother. _Anarien. Anarien Edrahiliel._ Her name had played over and over in his mind along with images of an elleth whose face was just out of focus but who had dark hair and eyes as grey as his. Of seven babies, he was the one who had ended her life. So crushing was that knowledge that almost he wished it had not been given to him.

“You can’t believe anything that Breigon says,” Lutha said out loud. “He’s angry and spiteful. People say whatever they like when they’re angry and spiteful.”

“That’s true,” Galad allowed reluctantly. “But I’m not sure that he is lying. I don’t remember everything about the day that my mother died. But what he said about my bear falling down the side of the bed…that’s true. I used to lose that bear so often that eventually Celegnir built a board to go between the side of my bed and the wall so that I wouldn’t have to keep waking him or Noendir to get the stupid thing for me.” 

Lutha noticed that Galad had never woken Breigon or their father to rescue the bear. “Even if that is true, and your mother was out the day that the storm hit to get materials to make you a new bear, you were never responsible for the choices that she made. You didn’t ask her to do that. You were, what, six?”

“Five,” Galad said quietly.

“Well then.” After a few moments, Lutha dared to venture, “Anyway. It’s not like you…I don’t know, killed your mother in childbirth.”

Galad looked sharply at him from across the path. “That is never the baby’s fault.”

“Never?”

“Never. Ask Master Nestorion if you don’t believe me.”

Lutha just shrugged and shook his head. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that. How could it be true when Anarien wouldn’t have died then if not for having to give life to him and his twin? _Then._ He supposed that was the important word. From what Baralin had said, Anarien would not have survived for long anyway. “Seeing as you know everything about everything,” Lutha said, changing the subject for both his sake and Galad’s, “what’s the Prophecy of the Golden King?”

“The what?”

“The Prophecy of the Golden King.”

Galad blinked. “I don’t know.”

Lutha blinked too. “What?”

“I don’t know,” Galad repeated. “I’ve never heard of it. Is it a storybook?”

“If I knew that I wouldn’t be asking you,” Lutha complained. “I don’t know what it is. I just heard someone mention it and I was curious.”

“Well, it sounds like the title of a storybook though not one that I’ve ever heard of,” Galad said. “You might try asking the person who mentioned it.”

That would go down spectacularly well. _Hello Ada, sorry but I eavesdropped on every single word of your conversation last night, but anyway tell me all about this prophecy._ “What about Galadhon?” Lutha asked. “Who’s he?”

“I don’t _know_ , Luthavar,” Galad said irritably.

“What’s the good of having a know-it-all friend when you’re only a know-it-some,” Lutha said, though he linked his arm through Galad’s to show that he didn’t mean it. His friend really was terribly clever and he had always admired Galad’s intelligence. He just wished that it wasn’t failing now when he could have done with it. “You’re sure you don’t know who Galadhon is?”

“The name is familiar,” Galad conceded reluctantly. “But I’m not sure why.”

“He would be ancient,” Lutha added. “Older than Daernana Thureneth. And probably from Doriath.”

“Doriath? Well, that would have to be…” They had reached a crossroads on the path, and Galad’s thoughtful expression cleared as they headed north toward Feredir’s house. “Yes, there was a Lord Galadhon of Doriath. He was the eldest son of the Steward, Lord Elmo, and a nephew of Aran Elu Thingol. His eldest son is Lord Celeborn. You know, as in _the_ Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel.”

“What happened to him?”

“Oh, well,” Galad said, getting into his stride now that he was in comfortable territory, “I haven’t looked at my history books for a while. But from what I remember, Lord Galadhon helped Princess Lúthien of Doriath to escape imprisonment so that she could help Beren on the Quest for the Silmaril. That was in direct contravention of the King’s orders so Elu Thingol banished him from the kingdom. His own nephew. Can you imagine?”

“No, I can’t,” Lutha murmured.

“The really sad part is that Elu Thingol saw sense and rescinded the banishment but there are no records of Lord Galadhon ever returning to Doriath,” Galad continued. “It is said that the nobility are known for their stubborn pride and that the House of Elmo was one of the worst for it. Lord Galadhon could have gone home to his family, and maybe he meant to. But the Fall of Doriath happened, and then the Third Kinslaying at the Havens of Sirion, and all his family was killed except his eldest son and a handful of nephews. He has never been seen again.”

“But he could still be alive,” Lutha pressed. “If he wasn’t there for either of those events.”

“He could,” Galad allowed. “I suppose that he might use a pretend name. Why the sudden interest?”

Lutha shrugged. “No reason.” But his mind was whirling. Rethedir – stern and forbidding Rethedir, Chief of the Elders, was the nephew of Elu Thingol himself and had done all those things; helping Princess Lúthien and being banished for it, losing the greater part of his family and…and just disappearing? Lutha had never known anything about Rethedir’s past and he had never been brave enough to ask, but he had never imagined that it might be anything like this. He rubbed his brow with a little grimace. There were far too many mysteries being unravelled for his liking and yet not enough, because he still didn’t know a thing about that damned prophecy.

“Where are you getting all this from?” Galad demanded, suddenly suspicious. “And why are you being mysterious? Have you been eavesdropping on something that you shouldn’t have heard?”

Lutha put a hand to his chest. “So rude.”

“You _have_ been eavesdropping,” Galad said under his breath.

“That doesn’t matter because we’re here now,” Lutha replied, as Feredir’s house came into view.

The horses were in the paddock and rugged for winter. One of them appeared to be trying to remove her rug. The dogs were inside, chased there by the cold bite in the air, all save one ancient and loyal wolfhound who lay on the porch with his head on his paws, blinking slowly as he watched Feredir chopping wood. The wolfhound lifted his grey head as Lutha and Galad approached, only to thump his tail against the ground when he recognised them. That caught Feredir’s attention, and he looked up with a smile, his breath misting in the air as he embedded the axe in the lump of wood.

“Hello, you two,” he said, brushing dust and woodchips from his hands. “This is an unexpected surprise. I thought that you would both be at home, feeling terribly sorry for yourselves and under house arrest for the next fifty years.”

“Ha, ha,” Lutha said, though Galad just looked uncomfortable.

“Come in. Alphros will be pleased to see you.” Feredir led the way to his house of handsome brick and wood, and the old wolfhound slipped through the front door as soon as it was open. The inside of the house had a certain scent to it; wood, baked bread, and a subtle hint of spice. Overall it just reminded Lutha of warmth. “Come see what I bought for Alphros yesterday,” Feredir added happily.

Lutha exchanged a glance with Galad as they followed the young Elder. Alphros had finished his apprenticeship some years ago. The apprenticeship of a hunter and forester was much shorter than that of a healer; so, while Galad was still studying under Nestorion’s tutelage, Alphros had the knowledge and skills to work his craft anywhere he pleased as a paid journeyman employed by a master as he developed the experience to strike out on his own. But while he adored his family, it had not been his wish to return to their quiet little settlement, a decision that they had fully supported if he was somewhere that he would be safe and looked after. Feredir, in no rush to take another apprentice, had readily promised that Alphros could stay with him for as long as he liked. It was an arrangement that had worked perfectly for the last fifteen years. 

When they entered the living room where flames roared pleasantly in the stone fireplace, it was to see Alphros reclining on the couch with a book lying open in his lap and his bandaged ankle propped on a cushion. He immediately brightened at the sight of his friends and closed the book without marking his page. “Look at this,” Feredir said. He picked up a little silver bell from the table next to the couch and gave it a shake, laughing as it jingle-jangled through the room. “I got it for Alphros to ring whenever he needs something.”

Alphros rolled his eyes. “He’s so pleased with himself. It’s not that funny.”

“It’s a bit funny,” Lutha replied.

“See? It’s a bit funny. You’re outvoted,” Feredir said, putting the bell down. “Is there anything that you need before I leave you boys alone, Alphros?”

Alphros shook his head, and Lutha watched Galad carefully sit next to him and enquire about his injured ankle. Feredir was heading to the door. He would be gone soon. Before the hunter could disappear, Lutha took a breath and hastily said, “Feredir, can you stay?” That caught everyone’s attention and he shifted as he felt them watching him. “I have something that I need to tell you all. I’d rather do it in one go.”

“Is something wrong?” Alphros asked guardedly. “It sounds as though something’s wrong.”

“Um. I’m not…I’m not really sure,” Lutha admitted, and to his horror he felt tears filling his eyes.

Alphros sat up with a breath of dismay and Galad just looked stunned. If Feredir was equally startled, he didn’t show it, simply putting his arm around Lutha’s shoulders and leading him to an empty chair. As Lutha sat, Feredir perched on the arm of the chair and kept his arm around him. “Tell us what happened,” he said, all levity gone, his voice calm and encouraging. “Did you quarrel with your father?”

Lutha laughed huskily and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “No. Yes. Well, sort of. We made up. But that’s not…something happened yesterday when I got home.”

“All right,” Feredir said gently. “And what was that?”

“My father,” Lutha whispered. “My father who…who made me, my biological father. He found me. He’s here.”

And it all came out, everything, from his first meeting with Baralin when he had hidden in the tree to confronting him with harsh words and balled fists; his argument with Faelind, the surprise that they were cousins, and the dark tale of his birth and his mother’s death and all the siblings that he had lost. His friends listened in silence, Alphros wide-eyed and Galad pale while Feredir just kept his arm firmly around Lutha’s shoulders the entire time. Talking to them, Lutha cried more than he had the day before and even during the night when he had lain awake thinking about it all. He couldn’t even say why he cried. Baralin’s return to his life was no bad thing. Still, the tears came.

“What are you going to do?” Feredir asked softly, when the story ended. 

“I want to get to know him.” Lutha sniffed and dragged the back of his hand across his eyes. “I do. I was interested in him even before I knew that he was my…”

“Your father,” Alphros finished.

“Yes,” Lutha whispered, putting his arms around himself. “That. But it feels like such a betrayal to think of him in that way.”

“Of course it isn’t. You’re not betraying Elder Faelind if that’s what you mean,” Alphros said. “You’re simply stating a fact. Baralin _is_ your father.”

“This is going to be difficult for Faelind however you refer to Baralin,” Feredir added. “There’s no point pretending otherwise. But he’ll manage. You’ll both – you will _all_ , Baralin included – find a way to make this work. Just remember that it won’t happen overnight. It’s going to take time, patience, effort, and understanding from all three of you. And I think if you can find it in yourselves to do that then this might be the start of something wonderful.”

“Do you really think so?” Lutha asked, hearing the hope in his own voice.

“I really do,” Feredir promised. “Most people only have one father to love them. You’ll have two, Lutha. How lucky are you? And who knows, Baralin and Faelind might become the best of friends.”

The very idea prompted a small laugh from Lutha. “That will take a long time.”

“And that’s fine,” Feredir said encouragingly. “They have time.”

Talk turned to lighter things and Feredir brought the boys sweets and biscuits which were gratefully received. Alphros did ask Galad about the encounter with his brothers the day before, which of course was not a light matter at all, but the mood lifted again when Alphros leaned back and said with a sigh, “It’s so exhausting being the only uncomplicated one of us.” Lutha shared a look with Galad, but ultimately they were only able to give each other a shrug of acceptance. Alphros was, generally speaking, entirely uncomplicated.

Lutha and Galad might have stayed for dinner, but as the afternoon drew to a close Galad looked so uncomfortable at the prospect of testing Nestorion’s generosity in releasing him from confinement that Lutha suggested they leave shortly before sunset. The two of them said their goodbyes to Feredir and Alphros, and they walked in silence until they reached the crossroads that led into town. There Lutha hesitated. Two thoughts had been dancing through his mind, and they both needed to be addressed before he went any further. “You didn’t say anything,” he said abruptly, when Galad turned back to look questioningly at him. “About my…about Baralin. Feredir and Alphros did all the talking. You just sat there.”

“You know I don’t mind when other people do all the talking,” Galad said after a moment. “I’m happy to listen and contribute when it’s needed.”

“Yes, but you didn’t contribute,” Lutha pointed out.

“Sorry.”

Galad spoke the word automatically, and Lutha recognised it as the quick and instinctive response his friend gave to avoid conflict even if he had done nothing wrong. It made Lutha angry all over again at Galad’s father and eldest brothers for instilling that instinct in him, but he also felt a flash of frustration at himself for putting Galad in that position. “No,” he said forcefully. “Don’t be sorry. You don’t have to be. _I’m_ sorry.”

“I don’t understand,” Galad began. 

“I’m sorry about Baralin, all right? I’m sorry that he’s here and that I’ve got two fathers and that you’ve got…” Lutha gestured helplessly. “I’d share if I was able to. I’d give you half of Faelind and half of Baralin if I could so that we each had one wonderful father. But I can’t do that. And I’m just sorry. I didn’t think about how this might make you feel so now I’m the one who hasn’t been a good friend.”

Galad had been staring incredulously throughout Lutha’s speech. He shook himself as it came to an end and put his hand on Lutha’s shoulder. “Half of Faelind and half of Baralin? Sometimes you talk absolute nonsense. But…” He sighed reluctantly. “I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t envy you just a little bit. But more than that, I am happy for you. Nobody deserves this more than you. I really mean that.”

“You do?” Lutha asked softly.

“I promise,” Galad replied. “Look, there’s nothing else I can say, but if you want to talk more about it can we at least keep walking? It’s freezing.”

“It’s all right. I don’t need to talk anymore,” Lutha said. “Besides, I’m not going home just yet. There’s somewhere else I have to be.”

Galad caught his breath as his eyes went to the signpost pointing towards the town. A look of understanding crossed his face and he gave Lutha a quick hug. “Go,” he whispered. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Thank you,” Lutha whispered back.

The market stalls in the town of Amon Lanc had already packed up for the day as was customary in the colder months when dark came on early, but most of the shops were still open, lights glowing in their windows and inviting people in from the cold. Lutha walked past them until he reached The Great Oak Inn. Then, thinking better of it, he walked past the inn as well. “Stupid,” he chided himself under his breath. “Stupid, stupid…”

Lutha went to the sweet shop and bought some fudge, and then he went to the bakery just before they closed and bought a lavender cake. He didn’t even like lavender. But it was the end of the day and there hadn’t been much left to choose from, and Lutha would have felt awkward walking in and walking out again. Then, with his fudge and his horrible lavender cake, he went and sat on the edge of the fountain to stare at the inn from across the plaza. He didn’t sit there for long. The stone was cold and it seeped through his cloak and his leggings all the way to the backs of his thighs. Grimacing, he got up and stood still, staring some more at the inn.

Summoning his courage from somewhere deep within, Lutha quickly crossed the square. He didn’t hesitate this time because he knew that if he did he would just turn tail and flee. He stepped inside the inn’s little porch, but just as he reached for the inner door it swung open from the other side, forcing him a step back to avoid a collision. The person coming from the opposite direction stopped as well with a barely audible intake of breath.

“Sorry, Lord…Elder…Elder Rethedir,” Lutha said quickly.

Elder Rethedir – or Lord Galadhon – inclined his head slightly. There was something in his green eyes that Lutha had never seen before; a spark of recognition, of familiarity, of…of respect, even? And suddenly Lutha understood. Rethedir knew. He had been told everything and he knew that Lutha was the son and heir of Lord Baralin Ravondirion, that he had been born into one of Doriath’s most noble families even if he had been born into darkness too. Rethedir would have known his family, Lutha realised. And now Rethedir was looking at him, rethinking everything he had ever known about Lutha, and maybe even wondering if he could see this cousin or that grandparent in him. Lutha felt himself overcome with the urge to ask questions, but he couldn’t, not without giving away what he had discovered about Rethedir’s past. It was no secret that Rethedir had come from Doriath. But who he truly was, the life that he had lived…Lutha couldn’t reveal what he knew.

“I was not expecting to see you here, Luthavar,” Rethedir remarked.

Lutha hadn’t expected to see Rethedir there either but he thought that it might be disrespectful to say so. “I’m just…visiting.”

“Not misbehaving, I hope.”

“No, sir. Not right now. I haven’t all day. But I might later,” Lutha said, horribly aware that he was babbling nervously. 

“Don’t,” Rethedir said calmly.

“Yes, sir,” Lutha replied. “Or no, sir. I’m never sure which response is right. I’m agreeing with you though.”

“I am delighted to hear it.” Rethedir stepped aside and gestured to the door. “In you go, then.”

Lutha thanked him and slipped past into the inn’s common room. His suspicion that Rethedir had been at the inn for the same reason as him was confirmed when his eyes fell on Baralin seated at a table in the corner with one glass of wine in front of him and an empty glass opposite which was collected by one of the serving maids. Again Lutha hesitated, his stomach fluttering and his heart racing, but before he could back away, Baralin glanced up and looked unerringly at him from across the room. He caught his breath. On Baralin’s face he saw surprise followed immediately by pleasure.

“Hello,” he offered, as he approached the table.

Baralin stood up and made a slight movement with his hands as if he had been about to hug Lutha or squeeze his shoulders or some other paternal thing, but in the end he just rested his hands on the back of the chair with a rueful smile. “Luthavar. It’s really good to see you. Are you meeting someone? Or…”

“You,” Lutha said awkwardly. “If that’s…I mean, if I’m not disturbing you.”

“No! No, of course not! Sit down.” Baralin gestured to the bottle of wine on the table as he and Lutha took seats opposite each other. “I’ll get another glass. Oh, but maybe you can’t…or can you? I don’t know the laws here.”

“I’m allowed one glass on my own or two with a guardian. But I don’t really…” Lutha glanced at the bottle. “It’s not my favourite.”

“Order whatever you like,” Baralin encouraged him.

In the end Lutha just asked for a raspberry cordial. He wrapped his hands around it and sat quietly with Baralin, the two of them making talk so small that it was unbearably awkward, until finally a lull came in the conversation. Lutha cast around for something to say, his gaze running over the other customers, the fire blazing in the great hearth, the musicians just setting up for an evening of playing. Finally, he settled on, “Elder Rethedir was leaving here when I arrived.” Lutha noticed that Baralin looked guarded, so he added, “He’s from Doriath too, you know.”

Baralin relaxed a little. “Yes, I know. I knew him in Doriath though I was closer in age to his sons.”

“He’s ancient,” Lutha said.

That made Baralin laugh, a pleasantly low and throaty sort of chuckle. “I suppose so. I hope that everything was all right last night when I left. I’m well aware how much I have thrown your life into disarray.”

“Everything was fine. It’s just going to take some getting used to, isn’t it,” Lutha said. “For all of us.”

“It is at that,” Baralin agreed. “But for my part I am so very happy. You are already everything that I dreamed of, Luthavar.”

Lutha sipped his cordial to hide his embarrassment; a pointless exercise, because he was sure that it was showing in the flush of his cheeks. “You only met me yesterday.”

“That doesn’t matter. You are my son.” Indigo eyes met grey across the table. Baralin smiled, and Lutha shyly returned it before glancing away. “I have so much to learn about you,” Baralin went on. “It would make me very happy if there’s anything that you would like to share with me about yourself.” 

“The bad things?” Lutha asked warily.

“Not the bad things, no,” Baralin replied quietly. “Tell me good things. Things that define you.”

“Oh. Well, I…I like cats,” Lutha ventured.

A smile lit up Baralin’s face. “Do you? My mother – your grandmother – used to keep cats. Not small housecats but large fishing cats with spotted fur and round ears.”

“I don’t think we have those here.” Lutha wondered why it was so difficult to think of things to tell Baralin about himself, but he realised right away that it was because he wanted Baralin to think well of him. “I like learning things,” he said finally. “History and languages, that sort of thing. I’m quite good at numbers. I enjoy riding. My favourite colour is…well, I have a lot of favourites but at the moment it’s turquoise. I like staying up late and sleeping in. Oh, what else…” Lutha’s gaze fell on the cloth-wrapped lavender cake, which he had put on a spare seat with his cloak and his bag of fudge. “I don’t like lavender. The colour is pretty. But I don’t like the smell or the taste.”

“It’s an acquired taste,” Baralin agreed.

“Can you tell me something about you?” Lutha asked. “And something about your – well, our – family?”

“Something about me,” Baralin echoed thoughtfully. “I have tattoos.”

Lutha’s eyes widened. “Where?”

“Here,” Baralin said readily, resting his hand above his heart. “And on my back and my shoulders.”

“I might like to get tattoos one day,” Lutha said. “But so far I’ve only been brave enough to get these.”

Baralin smiled approvingly as Lutha pushed his hair back to reveal two piercings in the lobe of each ear. “You’ll have as many as I do one day. I hope that your father likes them more than my father liked mine.”

“I think he’d prefer that I not get more,” Lutha admitted. “But he wouldn’t forbid me.”

“Good,” Baralin murmured. His gaze went distant and he leaned back in his chair with a thoughtful sigh. “Now, as for what I can tell you about our family…would you like to know how we came to be a noble family of Doriath?”

Lutha nodded eagerly. “Yes please.”

“My father’s parents, your great-grandparents, were awakened on the shores of Lake Cuiviénen all the way back at the beginning of our people’s existence,” Baralin began. “Aramath was one of the greatest warriors of his time, so fierce and deadly that the enemy trembled when he came for them. He died before I was born, but all the stories tell of the shield that he carried – a great thing of hammered silver set with rubies, clear diamonds, emeralds, blue agate and chalcedony; it was a gift from Elu Thingol himself for Aramath’s service, along with a lord’s title. So legendary were Aramath’s skills that many people said this war or that battle would have turned out differently had he been there.”

“How did he die if he was so great?” Lutha asked. Then, just to be safe, he swiftly added, “I’m not being insolent. Just wondering.”

“Well, when Aramath fought it was at the side of his best friend and sworn brother Lord Amathaer. But where Aramath wielded sword and shield, Amathaer possessed great power of spirit which in the early days caught the attention of the Maiar,” Baralin explained. “They taught him the art of enchantment and he learned how to hold a defensive shield, weave the fabric of the air into nets to ensnare the enemy, and create powerful illusions and visions. But one day he went too far. He burned himself out with a flash so bright that it blinded Aramath. Unable to see his enemies, Aramath was slain.”

“But that…that’s incredible,” Lutha said disbelievingly. “Like something from a story.”

“Just so. As for your great-grandmother, Calelil, her power lay in her voice,” Baralin continued.

“That doesn’t sound so impressive,” Lutha ventured.

Baralin chuckled. “Ordinarily, no. But did not Princess Lúthien sing Morgoth to sleep with the power of a song and move the Lord of Mandos himself to pity for the return of her beloved Beren? Calelil was well before Lúthien, and her deeds have not lived on in legend in quite the same way, but the Maiar taught Calelil to weave Songs of Power. With her voice she enchanted the enemy and tricked them into making fatal mistakes where instead they would have attacked our people. But Calelil’s voice was coveted by Thuringwethil, a vampire who served the forces of darkness. Calelil was captured and never seen again.”

“I can’t believe that _I’m_ descended from people like that,” Lutha whispered.

“It sounds a lot to live up to,” Baralin agreed sympathetically. “But all you need to be is yourself, Luthavar.”

Information passed back and forth between the two as their talk continued, and in the process they each learned little snippets about the other. Lutha learned that Baralin liked red wine best of all, that his favourite animal was the Haradric lion, that he spoke a dozen different languages, and that he could play the harpsichord. Baralin discovered the true extent of Lutha’s talent with numbers, his eyes shining with pride as he quizzed Lutha on complicated sums that would have baffled other people. But Lutha was conscious of the time, and before it got too late he glanced towards the door.

“I’ll walk you home,” Baralin said.

“You don’t have to,” Lutha began.

“It wasn’t an offer, it was a statement of fact,” Baralin retorted wryly. “It’s dark out. I’m not letting you walk home by yourself.”

“It’s dark but it’s not late,” Lutha pointed out. “It’s just winter-dark.”

Baralin snorted. “Dark is dark.”

So Baralin won that round and escorted Lutha home along paths lit by glass-encased lamps hanging from iron wrought poles. When they stepped onto Faelind’s land, the large house coming into view with lights glowing in its windows, Lutha hesitated. He hugged his detestable lavender cake against his chest, shivering a little as the wind blew through the trees and tickled his neck.

“The house is just there,” he said. “I can go on from here.”

The moonlight showed a knowing glint in Baralin’s eyes. “Go on from here then. But Luthavar…forgive me for giving you unsolicited advice, but I must caution you against keeping me a secret from your father. I will respect the boundaries that you put in place, but when you come to see me – and I hope that this was not just a solitary event – I think it only fair that Faelind knows.”

“No, you’re right,” Lutha agreed slowly. “I’ll tell him.”

“Good,” Baralin murmured. “Go on, then.”

Lutha smiled and turned to go, but a thought popped into his head and made him turn back. “Baralin? Does it bother you?”

“I’m good but I’m not that good,” Baralin said with a wry smile. “Does what bother me?”

“Well… _that_ ,” Lutha said. “The fact that I call you by your name. And that you have to say ‘your father’ talking about someone else.”

“None of it bothers me,” Baralin promised. “Perhaps one day you will call me something else but for now you’re just getting to know me. That is all I could ask for. As for your other question, no, I don’t think of Faelind as anything less than your father. I am happy to give him the honour that he has earned by referring to him as such.”

Lutha sighed as he felt a weight lifting from his shoulders. He smiled gratefully. “Goodnight, Baralin.”

“Goodnight, Luthavar,” Baralin replied, returning the smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 1:   
> I don’t normally recommend my own stories but if anyone would like to see more of Elder Rethedir in his former life, he appears in Chapters 2 and 19 of Tales of the Third Daughter which can be found here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507025/chapters/892245 A much younger Baralin also appears in Chapters 2, 14, 15, and 16. That story is a collection of one-chapter tales so it isn’t necessary to read the whole thing.
> 
> Note 2: The friend of his great-grandfather’s that Baralin mentioned in the story about his ancestors is connected to the later royal family of Greenwood. Lord Amathaer’s great-grandsons are Oropher, Thranduil, and Legolas. Just a little piece of information that I’m not planning at the moment to put into any stories but something which people might find interesting anyway!


	7. A Messenger in the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lutha makes a confession, Faelind learns, and a messenger appears out of a cold winter’s evening.

The words blurred on the paper.

Faelind sat back with a sigh and dropped his quill onto the desk. Then he steepled his fingers under his chin and leaned his head on the back of the chair. But only for a moment. Restless, he rose and stared out of the window into the darkness of an early winter evening. He couldn’t be upset with Lutha for not being home yet. It would be unfair to alter his expectations of when his son should be home based on the changing seasons and when it got dark - and he did always try to be fair. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, he reminded himself. Lutha wasn’t due home for another hour.

Sinking back into his chair, Faelind slowly tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk and cast his mind back over the events of that day. On Thureneth’s advice he had met first of all with Elder Rethedir – Lord Galadhon of Doriath, he now knew – to inform him of Baralin’s arrival. Faelind had not thought that necessary for any reason other than Rethedir was Chief of the Elders, and making him aware of proceedings was simply a respectful thing to do. And indeed, in the telling of the tale, Rethedir had sat quiet and still, as impassive as ever. Only when it was over had he closed his eyes and touched a hand to his brow, let out a deep breath, and quietly declared that there was something that he needed to say too, for Baralin, should they meet, would know him at once. 

After being entrusted with the startling details of Rethedir’s former life, Faelind had set aside his surprise to meet with the rest of the Elders – all save Serellon who was working away at the eastern quarry. He had told them all about Baralin, relaying everything except their very first meeting in Harad. Privately, Faelind was relieved that Serellon was a problem for another day. It had been difficult enough facing the sympathy and well-meant but unasked for advice of the rest of his colleagues. He didn’t think that he could have tolerated Serellon’s brash outspokenness right then. It was no stretch at all to imagine the stonemason gruffly declaring that he would dropkick Baralin out of the forest if he dared to cause problems.

Then there had been the final matter. Faelind hadn’t been able to keep from his colleagues the knowledge that he was a relative of their future King, though he had kept from them that Thureneth had known about it all along; that was her business alone and it wasn’t for him to put her in a difficult position. Their newly discovered connection to Oropher Celepharnion had shocked everyone more than Lutha’s biological father revealing himself, which Faelind supposed was fair. After all, Lutha’s birth family turning up had never been entirely outside the realms of possibility. Thureneth and Faelind – and for that matter, Lutha - sharing grandparents with the ellon who would one day rule them all was something that nobody save Rethedir had ever had reason to consider.

The general feeling amongst the Elders had been that while the final decision should rest with Faelind as to what he did with this newfound knowledge, it might be safer to simply leave everything well alone and allow Oropher to come to Greenwood in his own time and without being lured there by the promise of meeting new cousins. That suited Faelind just fine. Well, mostly fine. Despite not yet knowing Oropher, he still wasn’t sanguine about keeping the information from him. He didn’t see that as his right at all. Everyone deserved to know who their family were. But if Faelind was honest, and if he let himself be selfish and only consider himself and Lutha, he rather thought that they had enough to contend with right then without having to embrace an entire new family.

The door opened then and Faelind sat up straighter, but it was only Mistress Marin. He sat back and nodded to her as she said, “I’ll be a-leaving soon, my lord. There’s quail roasting in the oven and I’ve just put the vegetables in – be sure to take them out in forty minutes – and I’ve made young Master Lutha’s favourite for dessert. It’s in the cold cupboard. Oh, and tomorrow’s my day off so I’ve made a pie. And, oh-”

“We’ll manage, Marin, thank you,” Faelind interjected. “Go home. Enjoy your day off.”

When the door opened a second time it _was_ Lutha, and Faelind couldn’t help breathing out in quiet relief. He rose with a smile and went to embrace his son. “There you are, my little boy.”

“I’m not late for dinner, am I?” Lutha sounded alarmed. “I thought that I would be home in time.”

“No, you’re fine,” Faelind assured him. He caught a scent of something in the air as he drew back. “Is that…lavender?”

“I bought a lavender cake,” Lutha said glumly, holding it up.

Faelind blinked. “We don’t like lavender.”

“No, that’s why I’m upset about it,” Lutha replied. “It’s a terrible waste.”

“Marin was getting ready to leave. See if she wants to take it home,” Faelind suggested. “I’ll finish up in here and then I will join you.”

Lutha nodded and left to rehome the cake and freshen up for dinner, and Faelind, feeling happier now that his son was safely home where he belonged, managed to put the finishing touches to the documents that he had been working on. Once that was done he locked his papers away and joined Lutha in the kitchen. It was cosy and pleasant there as warmth from the stove seeped into every corner. The smell of spices and roasted meat and baked goods lent the room a certain homely aroma that was different from the fresh scent of flowers that lingered in the rest of the house.

“How was your visit with your friends?” Faelind asked, when dinner was underway.

“I’m glad that I saw them. It was helpful to talk to them about everything,” Lutha said. “Feredir was there too so I told him about Baralin. And Nestorion knows. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I should think so,” Faelind agreed readily.

Lutha nodded and fell silent, looking intently at the piece of roast quail smothered in plum sauce that he had just cut. He took his time over eating it before delicately laying down his cutlery and shifting a little in his seat. “Galad and I walked a bit of the way home together,” he began. “But I went into town and Galad went straight home. He’s confined. Did you know that? Because of the thing with his brothers?”

“I did not know that,” Faelind replied. “But Nestorion will do as he sees fit and that does not seem an unfair consequence.”

Again a nod from Lutha and more uncomfortable shifting. “Hmm. So I went into town. I said that already. But I went into town and…well, I saw Baralin.”

“Did you,” Faelind said evenly. “I suppose it makes perfect sense that you would run into him when he is staying in town.”

“No, I didn’t…I didn’t run into him,” Lutha clarified. “I went to see him. It was a conscious decision to do that.”

Faelind slowly set down the glass of wine that he had been about to sip from. He gave Lutha a long look from across the table as his thoughts fell over each other in their attempt to be heard. Baralin and Luthavar, alone, without him there to supervise. What if something had happened? What if Baralin had tried to take Lutha away? What if Lutha had liked Baralin and laughed at his jokes and admired him? Faelind knew that that last jealous concern was unbecoming of him, and the thoughts subsided somewhat as he gave himself a mental shake. “I see,” he said aloud. “That is…understandable.” 

“It is?” Lutha said doubtfully. “You’re not just saying that? You’re not upset?”

“I’m not upset,” Faelind replied.

Lutha picked up his fork and impaled a slice of honeyed carrot. He chewed it suspiciously, eyes narrowed. “Really? You’re not doing that thing you do where you answer a question cleverly so that you’re telling the truth but only the version of it that you want to tell?”

“Is that a thing that I do?” Faelind asked mildly.

“Yes!” Lutha complained. “You said that you’re not upset. Fine. That can be true. But you might be furious or disappointed or betrayed or…or anything else!”

Faelind couldn’t help a low chuckle at his son’s indignation. “I’m not any of those things either, Luthavar. I was caught off guard to hear that you had gone to visit Baralin and I needed a moment to arrange my thoughts, but I do understand that you will wish to get to know him. That is absolutely your right. And as well as that, you must do what _feels_ right. I am pleased that you told me, my little boy.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Lutha admitted quietly. “I was going to keep it a secret because I thought that it might hurt your feelings. Baralin said that I should be truthful.”

“He was correct,” Faelind said. “So, you met with Baralin. How was that?”

“Really interesting. I told him things about me and he told me things about him and his family. Our family,” Lutha added after a moment. “Our great-grandfather was a mighty warrior and our great-grandmother sang Songs of Power to ensnare the enemy, but she was captured for her voice and he was killed. Did you know any of that?”

Faelind had long ago stopped wondering about his family history, but as a young elf there had been a spark of curiosity that had made him imagine what his ancestors had been like and whose blood ran in his veins aside from his young mother’s and his autocratic father’s. Against his will he felt that spark igniting somewhere deep inside. “I see,” he said aloud. “I did not know any of that. I fear I am as in the dark about our ancestry as you are, Luthavar.”

“And another grandmother, that would be Baralin’s mother whose name was Halloth, I think, she kept fishing cats and her husband Ravondir looked after injured birds and made them better,” Lutha went on.

A memory from thousands of years past flitted into Faelind’s head. He didn’t remember fishing cats, but he remembered looking wide-eyed at great birds of prey in pens, their wings wrapped or their legs splinted and bandaged. A tall ellon with dark brown hair and apple green eyes had held Faelind’s hand, his face handsome and his countenance noble and stern. _Ravondir._ Yes. Faelind distantly recalled a green-gowned elleth with red curls calling the ellon by that name. Ravondir had picked him up to look more closely at an injured snowy owl and he remembered feeling…warm. Because he hadn’t been used to being picked up – not by ellyn – for such things had been forbidden by his father Elrain, who would not have his small son coddled so that he grew up to be weak. Faelind was irritated by the sudden pang of sadness that dared to sneak up on him unawares, and to his great regret he felt some of that irritation directed at Thureneth. It might not have been in her power to stand up to Elrain but it would have been in Ravondir’s and Baralin’s. And Thureneth must have known that. She must have, Faelind thought.

“It is good for you to learn about all these people, Luthavar,” he said finally, shoving his feelings aside. 

Lutha glanced up at his father from under his lashes. “You could learn too. If you wanted to.”

“I am learning,” Faelind replied. “You are telling me, are you not.”

“Yes, but Baralin could tell you.” Lutha paused midway through lifting a slice of quail to his mouth and put his fork back down. He pushed his plate away a little and leaned forward to intently meet Faelind’s gaze. “Ada, I really think that Baralin wants to know you. The thing is, he has far too much respect for you, and for our bond, to ever make that first step himself. He’ll wait for you to do it and if you don’t…well, nothing will ever happen. So it has to be you.”

“I understand that,” Faelind said quietly. “I will make contact with Baralin.”

Lutha smiled and left the issue alone then, and talk turned to other matters as they finished the meal. They were halfway through dessert – pear and cream in hazelnut pastry – when Faelind broached something that had been on his mind. When there had been room for it there, anyway. “I must still visit the other settlement next week,” he began.

“Oh, Judge Baleth and the toothless horse thief?” Lutha asked.

“Judge Baleth and the toothless horse thief,” Faelind agreed with an exasperated sigh. “You expressed a wish to accompany me. Before any travel plans are made, I must know if that is still your wish.”

“Of course I still want to go,” Lutha said, blinking. “Why would you think…oh. Because of Baralin?”

Faelind nodded briefly. “Things have changed greatly since we spoke about the trip north.”

“Yes, but I still want to go with you,” Lutha insisted. “If you still want me, anyway.”

“I would like that very much,” Faelind replied with a faint smile. “Very well. Provided Baralin has no concerns, I shall have my assistants make the necessary arrangements tomorrow.”

“Baralin?” Lutha stared at his half eaten dessert and slowly buried a slice of pear under a mountainous layer of cream. “You don’t need to ask his permission.”

“No, I expect not,” Faelind agreed. “But keeping him informed of your whereabouts seems the polite thing to do.”

Father and son separated after dinner, Lutha going to bathe and make ready for bed, and Faelind returning to his study. He took out pen and ink, and a small slip of paper that could be rolled and given for delivery to one of the message birds that lived in the stables, but it took him some time to decide on the right words. The owl feather quill lightly tickled the back of his hand as it lay there motionless while he considered. Finally, he set his pen to paper. _Baralin_ , he wrote. _I would be pleased to meet with you as Luthavar has done. He will be abed at ten o’clock this evening. If you do not consider that indecently late for socialising, I invite you to come and-_

The sound of a bell ringing urgently at the front of the house startled Faelind. Ink smeared across the paper as he jerked his hand back. Saying something under his breath that he would _never_ let Lutha hear, he dropped the quill onto the desk and snatched up the ruined slip of paper. He scrunched it into a ball and tossed it into the fireplace on his way out of the study. As he strode through the house, rubbing the patch of ink on his hand, the bell at the front was still ringing and ringing and ringing, and Faelind saw in his peripheral vision Lutha inching curiously down the split staircase clad only in shirt and leggings.

Standing on the other side of the double doors was a young ellon in the green and brown uniform of Greenwood’s courier service. “A message for you, my lord,” he said breathlessly, bowing quickly before handing over a folded note.

Faelind nodded and briefly thanked the messenger as he broke the wax seal. Unfolding the paper, he read the message contained within and only just managed not to utter the words that he had spoken back in the study. Instead he read the message a second time, buying himself time to be certain that he understood and to decide on his actions, and then he exhaled slowly. “I see. Thank you.”

“Is there a return message, my lord?” the courier asked anxiously.

“Just that I shall be there tomorrow,” Faelind replied.

The ellon nodded and sketched another quick bow before turning and racing back to the horse waiting for him. Faelind watched them disappear at speed into the cold night before closing the door with a heavy sigh. As he turned, he saw Lutha standing there with his arms wrapped tightly around his slender frame, hugging himself against the chill that had crept into the house. The elfling’s feet were bare and he was shifting uncomfortably on the cool marble floor. “Go for your bath, little boy,” Faelind chided him. “Or stand on a rug.”

“What was that about?” Lutha asked, venturing further into the entrance hall.

“I must ride north to Glaerobel tomorrow,” Faelind said. “Our resident horse thief has set fire to the home of the ellon whose horses he was previously caught attempting to steal.”

Lutha’s eyes widened. “Was anyone hurt?”

“Master Merildir’s youngest children were in the house at the time,” Faelind replied grimly. “They live but they are not well. A message has also been sent to Nestaeth asking her to ride north tonight to assist the Glaerobel healers. I expect that she will take Nestorion with her. Luthavar, go for your bath, please. I must go out for a time. Nithaniel needs to know about this. Merildir is her father, the young elves her brother and sister.”

“I can’t go for my bath now,” Lutha protested. “I’m coming with you.”

Faelind just nodded to that and gestured for Lutha to get dressed. As his son turned and ran back upstairs, Faelind collected his cloak and swung it around his shoulders. Before it had even settled, he was striding through the front doors and out to the stables where the horses lifted their heads curiously to see him so late in the evening. His fastest stallion, Dúlinn, was not yet an old horse, for elven-bred horses lived much longer than those bred by mortals, but even so Dúlinn had been getting grumpier with every year that passed. Still, the black horse seemed to sense Faelind’s urgency, for he didn’t protest as he was led out of his warm stall and into the chill evening air.

Lutha emerged from the house just as Faelind was mounting up, fully dressed again but his cloak forgotten. Faelind didn’t comment on it. He simply reached down for his son’s hand, lifted him up in front, and pulled his own cloak around to wrap about him. They set off then, Dúlinn springing into action and riding hard down the lamplit path. Faelind kept one arm around Lutha as they rode, his hand pressed flat against the elfling’s chest to hold him securely.

When they arrived at Nithaniel’s house they were met by one of her assistants, who tossed her hair, sniffed at them, and told them that Elder Nithaniel was busy with the children and absolutely could _not_ be pulled away so they would have to come back another time. Faelind just gave the young elleth a long look until she quailed under his piercing gaze. He swept past her, leaving her to handle Dúlinn. He wouldn’t have minded being asked to wait but he did take offence to young elves sniffing and huffing at him. The only young elf who got to do that was Luthavar – and even that was not always with impunity.

They were not kept waiting long. When Nithaniel joined them in her study, decorated with flowers in vases and paintings done by children who had varying degrees of talent, she was wearing a white apron over her pretty cornflower blue gown. The apron had patches of water on it and soap suds that smelled faintly of berries as she ruefully rubbed them away. “I was not expecting visitors,” she said, removing the apron and placing it over the back of a chair. “Not that I am displeased to see either of you, but you have come in the middle of bath and bedtime.”

“So we were led to understand,” Faelind replied briefly. “I would not ordinarily visit unannounced during the evening. I know that it is a busy time for you. But there is something important that we must discuss.”

“Is everything all right?” Nithaniel reached around to tighten the ribbon holding her hair out of her face, and her light blue eyes moved between Faelind and Lutha and back again as she sat down with them. “I feel somewhat nervous.”

Faelind could hear it in the faint tremor of her voice. He wondered if she had sensed something amiss through the familial bonds that she shared with her father and siblings but had pushed it aside as her imagination playing tricks on her. “Nithaniel, last month an elderly woodsman attempted to steal horses from your father’s stables. Were you aware of that?”

“Yes, my youngest brother wrote of it in his letter to me last week,” Nithaniel replied, blinking. “Was there not some matter of the woodsman appealing his sentence that you were to go and deal with?”

“Just so. That was to be next week.” Faelind reached across and held his younger colleague’s hand. “I received word this evening from Judge Baleth that there was a fire last night at your family home.”

Nithaniel’s hand tightened on Faelind’s. “A fire? But how…my brothers, my sister, are they…” 

“Neither your father nor the eldest of your brothers were present when the fire started,” Faelind replied. “Your sister and your youngest brother were trapped in the house. I only received a short missive but my understanding is that your father returned home to find the house ablaze and he went in and got them out. They live, Nithaniel. They are unwell but they live. Nestaeth is riding north tonight to help tend to them.”

“My father,” Nithaniel repeated distantly. “He went into the fire.”

“He did, but he lives too,” Faelind promised her.

Nithaniel nodded slowly. After a moment it turned into a self-soothing back and forth rocking of her entire body. “I don’t understand how there was a fire.”

“The woodsman was found wandering in the area covered in soot and with burns to his fingers,” Faelind replied darkly. “He has been arrested and he will remain in the custody of the Protectors until I get there.”

“I ought to go too,” Nithaniel whispered. “My poor little sister, my sweet baby brother. But my charges…I can’t leave them so suddenly.”

“Elder Nestaeth is going and Ada said that Nestorion might go too,” Lutha spoke up. “Your brother and sister will be in the best care, Nithaniel.”

Faelind nodded gravely. “I shall ride north at first light.”

“So will I,” Lutha added.

“You, Lutha?” Nithaniel asked softly.

Faelind knew that she was thinking of all that she had learned earlier that day of Baralin’s arrival. He couldn’t help being a little surprised himself – Lutha accompanying him on a trip with a week’s notice was one thing, but leaving the very next morning was quite another given all that had happened over the last couple of days. But Lutha was nodding and giving Nithaniel a reassuring smile. “I don’t think that I can help much,” he was saying. “But I said that I’ll go and I will.”

“And I shall go there as soon as I can make arrangements here,” Nithaniel replied. “You’ll tell them that, Lutha, won’t you?”

“I will,” Lutha promised.

Faelind was silent the entire ride home as he made a list in his head of all the things that he would have to do before they left in the morning. Notes would have to be left for the household staff, word sent to his assistants and Thureneth and Baralin, clothing packed, and historic reading done on old Master Rodrik who had been causing trouble in every corner of Greenwood since the age of eight. Faelind resigned himself to another night staying up. But just because he would not be going to bed, it didn’t mean that Lutha had to suffer for it. As soon as they got home, Faelind kissed his son goodnight and sent him straight upstairs to pack, bathe, and go to bed.

A while after they had parted ways, when Faelind was ensconced in his study with the fire blazing in the hearth and a cup of fruit tea to keep him awake, he sensed that he was no longer alone. He didn’t look up from the missive that he was writing. “I thought that I sent you to bed an hour ago, little boy.”

The study door hanging ajar opened further and Lutha slipped into the room. “I’m worried.”

That made Faelind look up. “Worried? About the trip?”

Clad in a warm dressing robe over his nightshirt and leggings, Lutha wrapped his arms around himself. “And Baralin.”

“I said that I would send word to him and I still mean to do that,” Faelind replied. “I have not forgotten.”

“No, I know. But…” Lutha sighed and looked down. “When you go away I always know that you’ll come back. But I don’t know Baralin. I don’t know that he’ll still be here when we come home. I want him to be.”

Faelind put down his pen and stood. He stepped around the desk and opened his arms to Lutha, enfolding him in a reassuringly warm hug. “After everything that Baralin did to save your life when you were newly born, and after all that he has done to find you, he’s not going anywhere. He will still be here when we return. I promise you that.” Feeling Lutha nod uncertainly against his chest, Faelind added, “When I write to Baralin, I will invite him to dinner with us the day after we get back. We will not be away for long. Four days at the most, I should think.”

“Yes, invite him to dinner,” Lutha agreed. “Give him a reason to still be here.”

“He has a reason, silly boy,” Faelind said, drawing back and giving Lutha’s nose an affectionate but reproving tap. “Now. Bed.”

“Bed,” Lutha echoed dutifully. “I love you, Ada.”

“I love you,” Faelind murmured in return, and he watched Lutha leave before returning to his desk and the long night that awaited him.


	8. Glaerobel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faelind and Lutha ride north to investigate the fire only to find mystery awaiting them there.

They left home at dawn and arrived in Glaerobel in the middle of the afternoon. The town, named for its mines and the copper found in them, was to the north, but not north-north as Lutha referred to it. North-north was past the Mountains of Greenwood, and Glaerobel lay well before those. Though a smaller town than the southern capital of Amon Lanc, Glaerobel was not rustic like some of the little settlements that Faelind and Lutha had passed through on their journey. Being within a day’s ride of the northern rock quarry – which _was_ north-north – its buildings were largely of brick and stone though many homes and shops had thatched roofs and elements of wood. There were two inns in Glaerobel, a reputable one and an unreputable one, at least according to Faelind. He had just rolled his eyes minutely when Lutha had sweetly asked him which one they would be staying at.

Unlike Amon Lanc, where matters of law were dealt with in a grand chamber in the not-palace on the hill, Glaerobel had a courthouse in the middle of town. It was a long building next to the unreputable inn, and it was built entirely of brick with a red slate roof. Faelind had informed Lutha that a drunken brawl at the inn many years ago had seen an oil lamp being knocked over, and when the inn had gone up in flames, so too had the courthouse; after that, both buildings had been rebuilt with brick. On the other side of the courthouse was the banking house that served Glaerobel and the surrounding smaller settlements. Lutha looked around at it all with interest. Privately, he didn’t think that the unreputable inn looked all that unreputable. Indeed, it looked disappointingly normal. On the whole, the town was less pretty than Amon Lanc, which Lutha supposed had a reputation to uphold as the forest’s capital, but Glaerobel was still handsome enough.

The first thing that Faelind and Lutha did after leaving their horses and belongings at the reputable _Copper Cat Inn_ was attend the courthouse. Inside the double doors was a second set of doors that led straight into the courtroom, but they were closed and Faelind ignored them anyway. Instead he strode down the passage that ran down the side of the courtroom which was lined with office doors. A young elleth in a scribe’s tunic emerged from one of them, and her eyes widened at the sight of Faelind. She performed an odd little movement that looked like something between a bow and a curtsey, her cheeks flushing as Faelind calmly asked her to inform Judge Baleth that he had arrived. The elleth nodded and rushed off.

Faelind waited a few heartbeats before following her down the passage and around to the back of the building where Judge Baleth had her office behind the courtroom. The elleth in the scribe’s tunic was standing in the doorway, speaking in low tones and gesturing quickly, but she stepped aside when Faelind appeared behind her. He thanked her and swept into the office, leaving Lutha to smile at the scribe. After all, his father could be quite intimidating. Even if he didn’t mean to be.

The elleth seated behind the desk was clad in a sombre gown of black and grey, but the earrings that dangled from her lobes were purple and pink, and her hair was tied out of her face with a rose coloured scarf. Purple violas sat in a vase on her desk along with nodding snowdrops, and in between the bookcases that lined the walls were bright paintings of woodland scenes. A portrait above the fireplace showed off Judge Baleth’s family, with her painted face beaming as widely as her three children’s. Lutha had met Baleth a handful of times before, and each time he had struggled to imagine her sitting in stern judgement.

Baleth rose with a pleased exclamation and stepped around her desk with arms outstretched to embrace Faelind. Then she hugged Lutha and kissed his cheek, and he caught a scent that reminded him of the vanilla cake that Thureneth liked to bake. “Thank you for coming so swiftly and at such short notice,” Baleth said to Faelind as she drew back, and before he could reply she was looking back at Lutha. “And you, too.”

“There hadn’t been a fire when I first agreed to come,” Lutha replied. “Just an old horse thief with no teeth who I thought sounded funny.”

“He has seven teeth,” Baleth said, though her smile was fading. “Rodrik’s repeated unsuccessful attempts at thievery have indeed become something of a running joke through the years, but this…”

“I was surprised to receive your message,” Faelind said quietly. “Drunken behaviour and thievery, of course. But arson? After all this time? Rodrik is a nuisance but he has never before done physical harm to another person or their property. Even when he has been caught stealing he has never been resentful nor tried to exact revenge. This is entirely out of character.”

“Isn’t it just,” Baleth sighed, flopping back into her chair with her arms hanging over the sides. “And yet he was found in close proximity to the fire and covered in soot. What are we to think?”

“Has he spoken?”

Baleth sat up straighter and pushed a leather folder across the desk. “He was questioned by Captain-Protector Curulas and fully admitted breaking his house arrest to return to Master Merildir’s home. But to make another attempt at stealing the horses, not to set a fire. He claims that he saw the house alight soon after he arrived there and that he made an attempt to get in and see if anyone was inside. The door was too hot and the windows were breaking, and he could hear people running and sounding the alarm, so he slipped away because he knew that the blame would land on him.”

“And so it has,” Faelind replied grimly. “I wish to visit the house, and I shall meet with Master Merildir and his children before I speak to Rodrik. They are in the healing house, I take it.”

“The children are,” Baleth said. “But you will likely find Merildir there, too. He has been given a room at the inn but he has preferred to be with his children.”

“Understandable.” Faelind flipped open the leather folder and made no attempt to hide it from Lutha’s eyes when the elfling sidled closer to look over his arm at the contents. Inside was a written statement from Captain-Protector Curulas detailing his interrogation of Rodrik as well as statements from those who had witnessed the fire and helped to put it out. Also there was a map with the location of the house marked on it and a brief letter from the healer in charge who had overseen the attention given to Merildir, his children, and Rodrik. Faelind studied the map for a moment before nodding and closing the folder. He thanked Baleth, and Lutha gave her a small wave, and then father and son left her office to collect their horses.

“Ada,” Lutha said, as they rode out of town on the road that would take them to Merildir’s house. “Why was Rodrik only under house arrest if he had been found guilty of trying to steal the horses already? Was that his sentence?”

Faelind shook his head, his emerald eyes scanning the road ahead for the left turn that they needed to take. “No. There are only so many sentences that one can impose on a mortal man of his age, Luthavar, and Baleth sentenced Rodrik to six months in a cell here in Glaerobel and immediate banishment to his home village upon his release. Because Rodrik appealed the guilty verdict – as was his right under Greenwood law – his sentence was placed on hold and he was put in a room at the inn where he _ought_ to have remained until I arrived to deal with the appeal. As we know, he did not.”

“What will you do if he did set the fire?” Lutha asked.

“I am undecided,” Faelind replied, but Lutha thought that he detected something dark in his father’s voice. Out of nowhere, a question came to him, and he wondered if such a serious crime would ever be enough for Faelind to order Rodrik’s death. He had asked his father about such things before. Faelind had appeared not to enjoy talking about the matter, but he had not avoided Lutha’s questions. He had explained that he had never before sentenced one of their own kind to death but he had banished one ellon from the forest and decreed that another elleth should be escorted to Mithlond and put on a ship to the West. When Lutha had proceeded to ask him about mortals, Faelind had paused for a very long time. Finally, he had said that when the mortal people were granted but a century of life it seemed almost cruel to deprive them of any of their short years, and so he always sought to temper judgement with mercy, but there were some crimes so heinous, and with such little chance of rehabilitation, that death was the only real choice. Lutha hadn’t pried further. He had understood that such crimes must have truly been terrible for his fair and just father to ever give such orders. 

The house where Nithaniel had lived with her parents and her brothers and sisters was surrounded pretty gardens, paddocks, and redwood stables. Structurally, it looked fine. At first glance. When one looked up it was clear that the roof was destroyed, the handsome thatch burned away and the beams exposed to the cold air. The front door was hanging off its hinges and smashed windows had littered the ground with glass. Soot blackened the brickwork on the west side of the house and there were patches of dead grass where sparks had landed. Lutha wrinkled his nose and had to cover his mouth with the back of his hand until he got used to the acrid odour lingering around.

“Apart from the roof it doesn’t look too badly damaged,” he remarked. “We could go inside. There might be evidence.”

Lutha had only taken one step forward when Faelind’s hand shot out to pull him back. “Don’t you dare,” Faelind warned him. “The house may appear structurally sound from the outside but you have no idea what it looks like inside.”

That was far too sensible for Lutha’s liking but he conceded with a reluctant nod. He wandered around the perimeter of the house and its grounds, dutifully keeping a safe distance from anything that might cause his father to look sternly at him. Behind the house was a pool fed by a large stream that wound through the trees just beyond the borders of Merildir’s land. Lucky the pool was there and unlimited water had been readily available, Lutha thought, or things could have been much worse. He turned to walk away and as he did so he felt something underfoot. Stepping back, he looked down and saw a pipe lying in the grass. He knelt and picked it up, slowly rotating it in his hands and narrowing his eyes suspiciously at a crude etching on the side of the bowl.

“What do you have there, Luthavar?”

“I found this right here in the grass,” Lutha said. “It has an initial engraved in the wood. But it’s not one of our letters.”

“No,” Faelind agreed briefly, coming closer to examine the pipe. “It is from the language of the Woodmen. And that is Rodrik’s initial. So here we have further proof that he was indeed here – not that there was any doubt about that. But there is no such thing as too much evidence, Luthavar. Even if you think that you have enough, it is unwise to ignore anything else that falls into your hands.”

“Actually I stepped on it,” Lutha replied.

Faelind smiled slightly but then his gaze narrowed and he looked intently at his son. “Tell me what you think happened.”

“Not my job,” Lutha said swiftly.

“Humour me,” Faelind encouraged him.

Lutha looked dubiously at his father. For a moment he half wondered if Faelind was trying to trick him. Then he decided that that was not Faelind’s way and that he might as well play along. Besides, this was…well, not fun, given the gravity of things. But Lutha appreciated being there with Faelind, spending time alone with him after the shocks of the last couple of days, and having an opportunity to share this part of his father’s world when Faelind usually went to great lengths to keep his work separate from his private life.

“Step back to exactly where you found the pipe,” Faelind added. “Look around. Take it in. Think about it. Close your eyes if that helps. Then tell me what you think.”

Dutifully taking a few steps back, Lutha turned his head this way and that. He gazed at the house in front of him, the pool off to his right and the stables and the paddocks behind him. He looked down at the grass trampled not by light elven feet but a mortal man’s heavy footfalls. He looked back to the house, the brickwork on the eastern walls clean and untouched by fire or smoke. Again he looked to the paddocks, empty of horses, and to the stables beyond them. Finally, he looked at the pipe in his hand and it came to him in a flash of inspiration that made him gasp.

“Rodrik didn’t set the fire!”

“Explain,” Faelind said calmly.

“The fire hardly reached this side of the house. The thatch, yes, all of that is ruined, but there’s barely any damage to the east-facing walls. Look, those are clean where the other side is all black and sooty,” Lutha said excitedly. “If Rodrik did this then his footprints would surely be on the west side where the fire began. But the grass is only trampled with his footprints here and a bit around the front.”

There was a pleased shine in Faelind’s eyes as he listened. “So what is your conclusion?”

“That Rodrik approached the house from this side intending to steal the horses and he was standing here when he noticed the fire,” Lutha replied. “Maybe he was shocked and that’s why he dropped his pipe. Then he went around to the front of the house to try and open the front door. It was too hot so he disappeared into the trees without ever stepping foot around the west side of the house.”

“That is my conclusion too,” Faelind said. “Excellent work, my little boy.”

“I got it right?” Lutha demanded.

“Well,” Faelind clarified, “I would say rather that you followed the evidence to a logical explanation. Perhaps you ought to consider apprenticing to me instead of my mother.”

Lutha laughed breathlessly, mostly pleased to have earned his father’s approval, for that always brought him great joy. But a thought occurred to him and doubt settled on his face as he looked at the ruined house. “So if Rodrik didn’t do it…”

“That is what we shall have to find out,” Faelind said.

Upon their return to Glaerobel, they settled their horses at the inn again before returning to the courthouse to leave the pipe with one of Baleth’s assistants. From there they went to the healing house, a tall building set over three storeys with a wooden sign outside bearing a white jasmine flower surrounded by healing herbs. It was not precisely tranquil or beautiful like the main healing house of Amon Lanc, which was set in its own peaceful grounds outside town, but it was at least down a quiet side street away from the bustle of Glaerobel’s market. They were greeted inside by an elleth wearing a white apron over lavender coloured robes, her hands folded in her sleeves and her raven dark hair braided sensibly out of her face. Lingering in the air around her was a distinct scent of chamomile.

“We are here to see Simbelmynë Merildiriel and her brother Tirithon,” Faelind said. “And their father if he is here. My colleague, Elder Nestaeth, should have arrived already.”

“Yes, my lord, I will take you to them,” the elleth replied serenely. “Elder Nestaeth arrived at first light with her assistant and his boy.”

Lutha hastily turned a laugh into a cough when Faelind looked sharply at him behind their guide’s back. He thought that Master Healer Nestorion being referred to as Nestaeth’s assistant was both unfair and hilarious, and as for Galad not even being given the title of apprentice but simply _boy_ …well, Lutha stored that away as something for another day when he needed something to laugh about.

The adjoining rooms given to Master Merildir’s children were large and airy, and Lutha realised that there was in fact a garden behind the healing house. Or rather, in the middle of it. The passage that they had followed curved around in such a way that if one kept walking they would end up back where they had started. All the private rooms on the ground level had inner doors that led out into the wildflower garden where a fountain burbled at its centre, while those that were on higher floors had small balconies overlooking the garden.

Simbelmynë and Tirithon, both golden haired and blue eyed, were sitting up in their beds. Lutha noticed that the beds had wheels and he supposed that one of the siblings had been pushed from their room into this one so that they could be together. Standing at the side of the room with arms folded tightly over his chest was their older brother Carthalon, whom Lutha had met a handful of times through Nithaniel. The three healers from Amon Lanc were there as well, Nestaeth listening to Tirithon’s chest through a tube and Nestorion guiding Simbelmynë through a breathing exercise while Galad stood by and wrote something down.

Galad glanced up when Faelind and Lutha arrived, but he didn’t react at all save for a faint glimmer of recognition in his eyes. Lutha wasn’t surprised. Galad was always so professional that whenever Lutha and Alphros saw him when he was working, he behaved so formally that they might as well be strangers to one another. The other boys always found it funny to see how flustered they could make Galad in such circumstances, but this wasn’t the time for it, so Lutha just gave his friend a brief nod.

“Simbelmynë, Tirithon, this is my friend and colleague Elder Faelind,” Nestaeth said, collapsing the listening tube. “And I see that he has brought his…assistant, Luthavar.”

Nestorion’s green eyes sparkled with mirth while Galad just lifted an eyebrow at Lutha. “Well met,” Faelind said formally to the young elves.

“We are so pleased to meet you, Elder Faelind.” Lutha suspected that Simbelmynë’s voice was not always so gravelly. He also suspected, catching a coy smile and a blue-eyed glance from under the elleth’s lowered lashes, that she was enjoying her husky voice more than was appropriate. Simbelmynë looked back at Faelind, and added, “Our elder sister has told us so many stories of her time in the south and of all the Elders too. Have you come to find out what happened?”

“I have,” Faelind replied. “I wish to speak with you both but I shall be guided by the advice of your healers as to when you are ready.”

“Now is fine,” Simbelmynë offered.

Tirithon shifted uncomfortably in his bed. “Shouldn’t our father be here?”

“How old are you?” Faelind enquired.

“My brother is two hundred and forty-six. I am two hundred and eighty-nine,” Simbelmynë said proudly. “I reached my second _yen_ last year.”

“How exciting for you. I remember Nithaniel returning home for the celebration.” Privately, Lutha thought that Faelind was only exercising such patience because Simbelmynë had just survived a fire, and he hid a smile at how much effort that must be costing his father. “As you are both past your majority,” Faelind continued, glancing between the two siblings, “there is no legal requirement for you to have a parent or other older relative present. But if you would prefer to have your father here, and I understand that, I am happy to wait.”

“I don’t mind,” Simbelmynë said.

“I want him to be here,” Tirithon said quietly. “But he left.”

The ellon standing silently at the side of the room stepped forward. “Our father left a few minutes before you arrived, Elder Faelind. He has hardly left at all since my brother and sister were brought here but he wished to order more clothing for us. Everything that we own is still in the house, so…” He trailed off with a sigh and shook his dark golden head. “I can go after him and ask him to return, my lord.”

“If you would, Carthalon,” Faelind replied.

Lutha noticed as Carthalon left that he was wearing the green and grey uniform of a Protector though the tunic was loose on him. Then Lutha remembered Nithaniel telling him that Carthalon had trained in the south and spent some years there before returning home to serve out of Glaerobel. Lutha supposed that one of Carthalon’s broader colleagues must have lent him the uniform. The sound of coughing pulled him from his thoughts, and he looked up to see Nestorion helping Tirithon to sit up. “You’re fine,” Nestorion was reassuring him, meeting Tirithon’s frightened eyes and giving him an encouraging smile. “It’s just about time for your next lot of medicine, that’s all.”

While Nestorion held a cup of water to Tirithon’s lips, Galad stepped past Lutha and discreetly touched his arm on his way out of the room. Lutha understood the message and followed. He didn’t speak until they were in a cool storeroom a few doors down from Simbelmynë and Tirithon’s rooms, lined with work benches and shelves where there were arrayed bottles of medicines, jars of ointments and salves, drawers of dried herbs and flowers, and much more besides. Galad ignored them all and opened up a leather bag sitting on one of the benches. On one side of it was the rune _numen_ which Lutha supposed meant that the bag belonged to either Nestaeth or Nestorion.

“We brought our own medicines from home,” Galad said, taking out a bottle which contained a thick syrup. “I’m sure the ones here are fine but…you know.”

Lutha didn’t know but he nodded as if he did. “I didn’t know that you were going to be here.”

“I could say the same about you. Elder Nestaeth didn’t know how badly off the patients were so she asked Master Nestorion to accompany her as a precaution and of course he brought me,” Galad said, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he measured two doses of the medicine. “Actually, my practical studies in burns and smoke inhalation have been quite lacking so this is all quite fortuitous.”

“Not for Master Merildir and his family,” Lutha said under his breath.

Galad rolled his eyes towards him. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know. So how badly off are the patients anyway?” Lutha asked.

“As you saw. They’re both husky and they cough and wheeze a bit – Tirithon is worse, he was in the house for longer – and they each have some minor burns.” Galad set aside the doses of medicine and corked the bottle that he had taken them from. “According to the local healers, they were in an awful state when they were first brought here, agitated and delirious and drifting in and out consciousness. But they’re going to be fine. Anyway, let’s go.”

“What did you want to say to me?” Lutha asked.

Galad had stepped towards the door but he paused there with his fingers around the handle, the doses of medicine in two small cups in his other hand. “Hmm?”

“You wanted me to come here with you,” Lutha said patiently, tolerating his friend’s preoccupation with work. 

“I wanted…oh, right. I felt that I ought to warn you,” Galad replied. “Simbelmynë is a terrible flirt – at least when her father and older brother aren’t paying attention.”

“She flirts terribly?”

“Stop that,” Galad complained under his breath. “You know what I mean. Just watch out for her.”

“Noted,” Lutha promised.

They returned to the patients, and Galad was in the middle of giving Tirithon his medicine while Nestaeth saw to administering Simbelmynë’s dose when Carthalon returned with his father. Their work done for now, the healers retreated, and Lutha discreetly observed Master Merildir. The ellon looked remarkably like Nithaniel and Tirithon. It was from him that they had inherited their hair, a gold so pale that it was just a shade away from white, and they had his eyes – an unusual blue that appeared almost purple in the sunlight. But Merildir’s eyes were not wide and earnest like Tirithon’s or gentle and warm like Nithaniel’s. Nor were they cold, exactly. But there was a distance in them, a wariness, and despite the powerful way that Merildir held himself as he strode into the room and nodded an aloof greeting, Lutha decided immediately that this ellon did not trust him or his father. 

“I thank you for coming so far in what I believe is a case of revenge by a petty criminal, Elder Faelind,” Merildir said, and it struck Lutha that he sounded a lot like Rethedir, his voice rising and falling in a lilting accent not native to Greenwood. “I hope that you will forgive my appearance.”

Merildir’s hands were bandaged and his face peppered with a myriad of little cuts while a nasty bruise had bloomed on his temple. Though he had washed himself clean of ash and soot, there was yet a faint smell of smoke stubbornly clinging to his golden hair – as there was Simbelmynë and Tirithon’s, Lutha noted, as he quietly took a seat at the side of the room. “It was gained saving your children’s lives,” Faelind was saying. “There is no shame in it.”

While Carthalon resumed his place by the wall like a guard on duty, Merildir went to the chair at Tirithon’s bedside. He sat, but only after Faelind had taken a seat first. “I am sure you are all aware that Carthalon’s colleagues have a person in their custody,” Faelind said, glancing around at the family. “But it would not be right for any decisions, big or small, to be made without first speaking to everyone involved. So, firstly, I understand that Simbelmynë and Tirithon were alone in the house on the night of the fire. Is that correct?”

“Our father and I were hunting,” Carthalon spoke up.

“At night?”

The note in Faelind’s voice was mild curiosity rather than accusation, and Lutha watched as it prompted Carthalon to clarify, “By moonlight. It was a full moon.”

“Yes,” Faelind agreed. “Still…”

“A tradition,” Merildir interjected. “Every other full moon, Carthalon and I hunt at night. We have dinner together at the inn and then we hunt. We have done so since he was a boy.”

Faelind glanced at Tirithon. “You do not accompany your father and your brother?”

“No, my lord,” the young ellon replied, his voice husky but his coughing under control. “I go with them in the spring and summer when it is warm and they camp out for a few nights. I like that. But it’s the camping that I enjoy, not the hunting, so I stay home the rest of the time.”

“I understand.” Faelind turned his gaze back to Merildir and Carthalon. “So you left home at…”

“Seven or thereabouts,” Merildir replied briefly. “We left the inn shortly after ten.”

“With all respect, Adar, it was shortly before ten,” Carthalon said. “The night guards had not yet started their duties.”

Merildir inclined his head but said nothing more. “So, you two were alone from seven o’clock onwards,” Faelind said, looking to Merildir’s youngest children. “Tell me what happened.”

“That’s just it, Elder Faelind. Nothing happened until the fire,” Simbelmynë said. “We had dinner and it was a cold night so I went for a bath after. By the time I got out Tirithon had made ready for bed and he was in the sitting room with his book. I made us hot cocoa and we had the cream cakes that Ada had bought for us earlier that day, and I wrote in my journal while Tirithon kept reading. When we went to bed it was…oh, I don’t know. Certainly before midnight. Maybe an hour before.”

“It was a cold night as you said,” Faelind remarked. “Did you have a fire burning? Candles? Lamps?”

“Not candles but the oil lamps were lit,” Simbelmynë replied. “And the fire was going. Carthalon made it up for us before he left.”

“Which of you put the fire out before you went to bed?” Faelind asked.

“Both of us.” Observing silently from the far side of the room, Lutha thought that he detected a defensive note in Simbelmynë’s voice. “We quarrelled about whose turn it was so in the end we did it together. Then we went to bed.”

Faelind nodded impassively. “And the fire _was_ out?”

“Of course it was!”

_“Simbelmynë.”_

Merildir hadn’t moved or raised his voice, but he possessed an ability that Lutha had witnessed plenty of times from Faelind; neither of them needed to shout to convey warning to an errant child. The quiet voice cutting through Simbelmynë’s protest immediately made her subside, and she blushed faintly as she looked down and toyed with the edge of her blanket. “Yes, Elder Faelind. The fire was out.”

“So you went to bed,” Faelind said, wordlessly inviting her to continue.

“Yes. I fell asleep quickly. I don’t know how long I slept, but I was woken by a…a bang, a thud, like something falling over.” Simbelmynë clasped her hands together and stared down at them, biting her lip. “Everything felt wrong. The air was thick and I could smell smoke. I just lay there, scared, thinking that…hoping that I was having a terrible dream. But I made myself get up. I put my feet on the floor and it felt hot, and that was when I knew that it wasn’t a dream. I ran to the door but the hallway was full of smoke and I could see flames at the bottom of the stairs. I screamed for Tirithon – that is, I tried to. But there was too much smoke and it choked me. I slammed the door shut and I ran to the window, but my hands were shaking so much that I couldn’t open it. I just crouched there on the floor and covered my head with my arms. I thought that I was going to die.”

As Simbelmynë trailed into silence and looked away with a sniff, brushing at her cheek with the back of her hand, Faelind looked towards Tirithon. “And you?”

“I caused the thud that she heard,” Tirithon said quietly. “I left my room to wake Simbelmynë but everything was so dark and smoky that I couldn’t see and it was hard to breathe. I stumbled and fell sideways against the wall. The door to Simbelmynë’s room was right there but I was so confused. I just carried on. I all but fell through the next door that I came to, thinking that it was my sister’s room, but it wasn’t. It was Carthalon’s. I…I was so confused,” he repeated in a whisper, burying his face in his hands.

Merildir put a hand on his youngest son’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze of encouragement but Tirithon just shook his head mutely. “We were a mile from home when the smoke reached us on the night breeze,” Merildir said when it was clear that Tirithon could say no more. “Carthalon scaled a tree. He couldn’t see the flames but it seemed that the smoke was coming from the direction of home. We dropped everything and returned swiftly. People were already there trying to extinguish the fire but nobody had attempted to rescue my children.”

“One of the ellyn there tried to stop us from entering our own home,” Carthalon added.

“Yes. I had to shove him away before I could reach the door,” Merildir said, his voice tight with anger. “I kicked it down. Ran upstairs. Tirithon was not in his room but I found Simbelmynë by her window.”

“He dragged me out with his cloak over my head so that I didn’t breathe in any more smoke, and he kept asking me where was Tirithon, where was Tirithon, but I didn’t know,” Simbelmynë sobbed. “I thought that my brother was dead.”

“By the time I got my daughter outside and went back into the house, the bannister had collapsed and it was blocking the stairs. They were impassable so…” Merildir held up his bandaged hands with a sardonic smile. “Finally I found Tirithon curled in a corner of Carthalon’s room. He was not conscious so I carried him out. Healers tended to my children there on the grass before ordering them brought here. Now here we are.”

Lutha watched Faelind slowly twist the ruby and _mithril_ ring that he wore on his right hand. He hadn’t looked at it even once, but Lutha knew that he was using it as an anchor to ground him and grant him clarity of mind. “Thank you for sharing that with me,” Faelind said gravely. “I understand that it must have been difficult and I regret all that you have endured. It is my hope that you all recover swiftly and that your home may be saved. The services of my colleagues, Elder Serellon and Elder Thavron, will be made freely available to you.”

“Your assistance is appreciated,” Merildir said briefly.

“Of course.” Faelind rose elegantly and nodded to the others, and Lutha followed his example. Neither of them said anything as they walked through the hallway to an office which had been given to the Amon Lanc healers for their use. Nestaeth and Galad were both seated at desks, and Nestorion was standing by Galad, pointing over his shoulder at something his apprentice had written. All three looked up when Faelind and Lutha entered. “Your patients are well, though I suspect that they will be tired now,” Faelind said. “I will not need to speak with them again. Not today, at any rate.”

“Do you have an idea as to what happened?” Nestorion asked.

“Yes,” Faelind replied evenly.

“He won’t say a thing until he’s ready and has looked at _all_ the evidence,” Lutha said.

Nestorion chuckled under his breath. “Fair enough.”

Father and son left the healing house and stepped out into a chilly afternoon. The sky above looked fit to drop barrel loads of snow at any moment, the clouds thick and puffy. Just as Lutha was about to comment that he hoped it didn’t snow before they got home, he realised that they were not walking in the direction of the inn where they were to stay that night. “Where are we going?”

“I thought that you wanted to meet the old horse thief,” Faelind said mildly.

“Oh!” Lutha gasped. “I did. I do.”

Faelind nodded and led the way to a building one street over. Situated behind the courthouse, it was low and long, and Lutha didn’t recognise it as a prison. It was certainly nothing like the prisons that he had experienced in the old life that seemed so long ago now. Those had been dark and dank and smelly. Rats had scurried about in some of them. The uniformed Protectors tending the office at the front of this prison were in the middle of a game of cards, and that wasn’t so different to the bored mortal guards that Lutha remembered, but the cells were worlds apart from what he had known. These cells were sparsely decorated, yes, but they were clean and they even had high up windows that let in ribbons of natural light.

All of the cells were empty save one. The old and nearly toothless horse thief was lying on a straw mattress with his arms tucked behind his head. He was singing a song that Lutha wouldn’t have known even if it had not been offkey, but he stopped when Faelind sharply spoke his name. “Who is it?”

“Elder Faelind.”

“Oh, him.” Rodrik sat up, stretching his arms and rolling his shoulders in his apparently oft repaired patchwork shirt. Straggly grey hair brushed his shoulders, and his face was full of whiskers. As he got up and approached the barred door, Lutha saw that he walked with a slight limp. Rodrik leaned up close to the door and peered at Lutha. “Elder Faelind. You were taller last time.”

“Enough of your nonsense,” Faelind said irritably.

“Just a little joke.” Rodrik sniffed and turned his gaze to Faelind, looking him up and down critically. “Still no beard.”

“There was no beard last time we met or the time before that. Nor shall there be should we meet again,” Faelind retorted. “But I have not come all this way to debate the differences between my race and yours, Rodrik. Indeed, you know very well why I am here.”

“The fire. Weren’t nothing to do with me.” Rodrik looked curiously at Lutha then and rubbed the side of his face. It made a rough scratching sort of sound. “You his son?”

It didn’t matter that it had been forty years. It didn’t matter that Lutha knew Baralin now. He still felt so proud to be Faelind’s son that he couldn’t help the smile that crept onto his face as he nodded. Faelind stayed silent long enough to let Lutha have that moment before redirecting the conversation. _“Rodrik.”_

“Yeah, the fire,” Rodrik huffed. “What about it? Told you it weren’t me.”

Hands clasped behind his back, Faelind fixed piercing eyes on the old man staring sullenly at him like a child about to throw a tantrum. “Unfortunately for the both of us, that is not enough – and well you know it – so we shall have to spend more time in one another’s company until you give a sufficient account. If not for your own sake then for the young elves who were trapped inside as flames spread through their home.”

“I’ve never done nothing to children. Not ever!” Rodrik protested, pointing a knobbly finger through the bars. “And you know that!”

“I do,” Faelind agreed evenly. “So tell me how we come to be here.”

“Because those warriors, the Protectors, they seen me and they assumed,” Rodrik said angrily. “They seen poor old Rodrik and they thought he’s a likely looking fellow, we’ll stick this on him like it always gets stuck on him when a horse or a chicken or whatever you like goes missing. And…well, that’s all right,” Rodrik allowed, as Faelind looked disbelievingly at him. “But not this.”

Faelind arched one eyebrow. “So…”

Stalking back to the bed, his limp less pronounced now that he had used his stiff legs, Rodrik sat with his head in his hands and said nothing. For a moment Lutha thought that the trip to the prison had been a wasted journey, but then the old man blew out a breath and looked up. “Right,” he said shortly. “Them horses as I was accused of trying to take out of that white haired fellow’s stables – that’s true. I know I argued the sentence when that woman judge found me guilty but you know I had to do that, Elder Faelind. Had to get me a week or two in the inn ‘stead of in a cell. Anyway. That’s all true.”

“The suggestion is that you may have set the fire to take revenge on Master Merildir for catching you in the act and reporting you to the Protectors,” Faelind remarked. 

“Nah,” Rodrik snorted. “When have I ever done a thing like that? Far as I’m concerned if I nick something and get away with it then that’s mine and those who had it first ought to be more careful with their things. But if I’m caught then them as found me have got every right to be aggrieved and that’s my fault for getting caught in the first place. Would have rather that Meril…well, whatever you called him, would have rather he just let me go on me way but he didn’t. That was his right and that’s fair enough.”

“So what happened the night of the fire, Rodrik?” Faelind asked patiently.

“The fire. Right. Well, the room they put me in at the inn, it were small and at the side so the view weren’t nothing to get excited about, but you crane your neck just so and you can see out into the town square,” Rodrik explained. “Anyway, I were doing that to see what I could see and that’s when I noticed ‘em. So I thought-”

Faelind lifted his hand. “Who did you notice?”

“Him who has the horses.”

“Master Merildir?”

“Yeah, I seen him and he was with his boy, and it looked to me like they were heading to the front door of the very inn where I was confined,” Rodrik went on. “Course, the view I had didn’t let me see them walk in or no, so I held on a minute thinking I’d see if they walked away again only they never did so I thought they must have come in out the cold for a bite to eat. Anyway, this idea come into me head, and next thing I know, I’m jimmying the lock on the door and slipping out down the back stairs. Looking back now I ought to have made a run for it back to me home village – don’t reckon your lot would have bothered coming after me – but you know what they say. Once a thief always a thief.”

The words caught Lutha’s attention and he looked up with a softly indrawn breath. It felt awfully as though he had been punched in the stomach. Next to him, Faelind didn’t say anything, but he stepped close to Lutha under the pretence of moving nearer the door. “So what did you do, Rodrik?” he asked, resting his hand on Lutha’s back, a strong and steadying presence as he addressed the old man.

“Went back to the horses,” Rodrik sniffed. He patted his pockets in search of a handkerchief, found nothing, and dragged the back of his sleeve over his nose instead. “Took me a long time to get there. Got lost a few times and started thinking it weren’t worth it. Reckon it were nearing midnight before I finally found me way.”

“You didn’t think that Master Merildir and his son would have returned by then?” Faelind asked.

“I supposed so but the house was in darkness. No lights shining in the windows so I thought they’d be abed and I might as well try me luck,” Rodrik replied. “But there was a new lock on the stable door. I could have cracked it in time but me hands were that cold and shaky I thought stuff it, I’ll have a smoke and try again. Took me pipe out and wandered off to warm up, and as I’m standing there trying to light up I get a smell of something on the air. Something that ought not have been there if you understand me. So I stand there, sniffing, and then I seen it – smoke on the other side of the house. And not smoke from a chimney, either. You follow me?”

Faelind nodded gravely. “I do.”

“Right. Well, I didn’t move. Shocked, I was. But then I heard it. Crackling and spitting. That’s when I knew,” Rodrik said. “I started shoving me tinderbox and pipe into me pockets – leastways I thought I did, but me pipe was gone when they caught me later and searched me – and then I went towards the house. I tried banging and kicking on the front door but it wouldn’t give, and all I got for me trouble was smoke in me face and burned fingers from the heat. And then…well, I’m shamed to say that fear got the better of me and I ran off into the trees. I didn’t know them young’uns were in the house. Don’t know if it would have made a difference to whether I stayed or ran. Like to think it would have. But I didn’t know and that’s the truth. I could hear people shouting and making towards the house, so I carried on in the other direction. That’s when I were found and brought here. That’s all I’ve got to tell you. I _never_ started that fire.”

Glancing sideways at Faelind revealed nothing to Lutha; his father’s handsome face was an impassive mask. “Thank you for speaking so frankly, Rodrik,” Faelind said neutrally. “I have much to consider. You shall remain here until I reach a decision, and indeed beyond that; your sentence for the attempted theft of the horses still stands.”

“Suppose I won’t be getting out of here for a time,” Rodrik sighed.

Faelind just inclined his head wordlessly. He moved his hand to Lutha’s shoulder and began to guide him out, but Lutha turned suddenly and ducked under Faelind’s arm. He went back to the cell and stared through the bars at Rodrik, who had levered himself up from the bed to watch them leave. “I want to ask you something,” Lutha said without hesitation.

“Go on then, lad,” Rodrik allowed guardedly.

“How are you this age and you’re still being arrested for thieving?” Lutha asked. “I can’t believe that you were never given a chance to make something of yourself. Not if my father had anything to do with you.”

Rodrik exchanged a long look with Faelind that spoke of the shared history that lay between them. “I was given chances,” he said finally. “Never took ‘em. Once I started making trouble outside me home village and a few switchings ordered by your father never did more than curb me behaviour for a bit, he sentenced me to a month hauling rocks in the quarry north of here. Said if I proved meself a hard worker I might get a ‘prenticeship at the end of it. Ran off though, didn’t I. So next time I got caught thieving he had me brought down south to work with that young fellow. What’s he called again?”

“Feredir,” Faelind quietly supplied.

“Yeah. Liked him, I did. And it made sense – me a young woodsman, getting trained up proper in hunting and forestry by one of the elves no less,” Rodrik said with a wistful sigh. “I could have gone home and been the best of me village. Never worked out though. Time went on. Comes a point where you’re too old for ‘prenticeships and the switchings of your boyhood. So like I said: once a thief always a thief. Leastways for me. Still, I’ve a lot of respect for your father, lad. I’ve always felt safe knowing that he’d treat me fair. Places beyond these borders would have hanged someone like me a long time ago.”

“Yes, they would,” Lutha said bluntly. “But if you respect my father as much as you claim, maybe you should make this the last time he sees you in a cell.”

“What do you suggest I do with me last few years?” Rodrik asked with a short laugh.

Lutha shrugged. “You make it sound like you’re some expert lock breaker. Use that knowledge to make a clever new lock that might protect people from the next generation of thieves. Learn to speak Dwarvish. Or discover a hidden talent and start painting landscapes. I don’t know. Anything has got to be better than this.”

“Actually, Rodrik, I think that the lock idea has merit and that you would do well to heed my son,” Faelind said, as Rodrik stared incredulously at him. “In fact, I shall ensure that Judge Baleth and the guards know to provide you with whatever materials you need. Craft this lock by the time I return in three months, and not only shall I commute the rest of your sentence but I will help you find someone to make and distribute the locks and a percentage of the profit shall be yours.”

“You ain’t serious,” Rodrik said doubtfully.

“I could not be more serious if I tried,” Faelind replied. “Good day to you, Master Rodrik.”

He swept away from the cell with a swish of his long cloak, and Lutha followed after quietly wishing the old man luck. Not that he had at all doubted his father, but sure enough he found Faelind patiently informing the dubious guards that Rodrik was to have whatever he asked for providing he could explain how it connected to the art of lock making. They left then, stepping out together into the cold air as afternoon melted into evening, the winter sun sinking and lamps being lit around the town. Faelind didn’t blink at the cold, but Lutha shivered and pulled his cloak more securely around himself.

“That was a nice thing that you did for Rodrik. Giving him another chance like that and offering to commute his sentence if he… if he made the…” Lutha stopped as realisation hit. Faelind didn’t stop with him so he had to give himself a shake and run to catch up with his father. “You wouldn’t have made that offer if there was the slightest chance he would still be in prison after his sentence for the attempted thieving. You know how the fire started. Don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well?” Lutha demanded.

Faelind’s green eyes gleamed in amusement and satisfaction. “It was Simbelmynë and Tirithon,” he replied. “They started the fire.”


End file.
